Nostril Quotes & Sayings

Do you realize the illicit sensuous delight I get from picking my nose? I always have, ever since I was a child. There are so many subtle variations of sensation. A delicate, pointed-nailed fifth finger can catch under dry scabs and flakes of mucous in the nostril and draw them out to be looked at, crumbled between fingers, and flicked to the floor in minute crusts. Or a heavier, determined forefinger can reach up and smear down-and-out the soft, resilient, elastic greenish-yellow smallish blobs of mucous, roll them round and jellylike between thumb and forefinger, and spread them on the undersurface of a desk or chair where they will harden into organic crusts. How many desks and chairs have I thus secretively befouled since childhood? Or sometimes there will be blood mingled with the mucous: in dry brown scabs, or bright sudden wet red on the finger that scraped too rudely the nasal membranes. God, what sexual satisfaction! — Sylvia Plath

When I returned, not to Berlin, but to Hamburg in the midst of the fog of the beginning of winter, to the road that runs right above it's river and docks, a castle which never existed and a fountain which is really a sewer, a gust of wind far sweeter and more fragrant than any red rose carried the smell of shit and floating soil like a tongue into my nostril. — Kathy Acker

I'd take that gum out of the keyhole if I were you, Peeves," he said pleasantly.
Peeves paid no attention to Professor Lupin's words, except to blow a loud wet raspberry.
Professor Lupin gave a small sigh and took out his wand.
"This is a useful little spell," he told the class over his shoulder. "Please watch closely."
He raised the wand to shoulder height, said, "Waddiwasi!" and pointed it at Peeves.
With the force of a bullet, the wad of chewing gum shot out of the keyhole and straight down Peeves's left nostril; he whirled upright and zoomed away, cursing.
"Cool, sir!" said Dean Thomas in amazement.
"Thank you, Dean," said Professor Lupin, putting his wand away again. "Shall we proceed? — J.K. Rowling

One of the grandest figures that ever frequented Eastern Yorkshire was William Smith, the distinguished Father of English Geology. My boyish reminiscence of the old engineer, as he sketched a triangle on the flags of our yard, and taught me how to measure it, is very vivid. The drab knee-breeches and grey worsted stockings, the deep waistcoat, with its pockets well furnished with snuff-of which ample quantities continually disappeared within the finely chiselled nostril-and the dark coat with its rounded outline and somewhat quakerish cut, are all clearly present to my memory. — William Crawford Williamson

a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a — Edgar Allan Poe

Tai tapped his left nostril. 'You know what this is, Nakkoo? It's the place where the outside world meets the world inside you. — Salman Rushdie

Picture it in your mind's nostril: you get in a cab in time to catch twin thugs named Vomit and Cologne assaulting a defenseless pine-tree air freshener. — Sloane Crosley

I tell you, the old-fashioned doctor who treated all diseases has completely disappeared, now there are only specialists, and they advertise all the time in the newspapers. If your nose hurts, they send you to Paris: there's a European specialist there, he treats noses. You go to Paris, he examines your nose: I can treat only your right nostril, he says, I don't treat left nostrils, it's not my specialty, but after me, go to Vienna, there's a separate specialist there who will finish treating your left nostril. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Aegean Islands 1940-41

Where white stares, smokes or breaks,
Thread white, white of plaster and of foam,
Where sea like a wall falls;
Ribbed, lionish coast,
The stony islands which blow into my mind
More often than I imagine my grassy home;

To sun one's bones beside the
Explosive, crushed-blue, nostril-opening sea
(The weaving sea, splintered with sails and foam,
Familiar of famous and deserted harbours,
Of coins with dolphins on and fallen pillars.)

To know the gear and skill of sailing,
The drenching race for home and the sail-white houses,
Stories of Turks and smoky ikons,
Cry of the bagpipe, treading
Of the peasant dancers;

The dark bread
The island wine and the sweet dishes;
All these were elements in a happiness
More distant now than any date like '40,
A. D. or B. C., ever can express. — Bernard Spencer

In fact, I noticed everything about Alex. Like that his left nostril was slightly larger than his right nostril. And the way he ate a Kit Kat bar: chocolate first and then the layers of wafer separately. I could pick his one sneeze in a room full of sneezers. — Autumn Doughton

That's enough!" Holly scrambled out of her seat, too. "My three-year-old behaves better than all of you." She looked down at LJ, who was trying to stuff a fry up his nostril. "And that's not saying a whole lot. — Nicole Williams

Razo wasn't good at anything except maybe cramming two cherries up one nostril. — Shannon Hale

...his open nostril quivered with intent. — Bram Stoker

Yogi Bhajan once wrote, "...you are not free by taking drugs. The neurons of the brain will become feeble. You will lose your nostril pituitary sensitivity. You can never smell the subtlety of life. You'll always be dragging your life." With artificial highs, the individual is left enslaved by the need for their next fix. The selfishness to fulfill that need drives many an addict to do unspeakable crimes. Any — Jen Solis

LE CHIFFRE looked incuriously at him, the whites of his eyes, which showed all round the irises, lending something impassive and doll-like to his gaze. He slowly removed one thick hand from the table and slipped it into the pocket of his dinner-jacket. The hand came out holding a small metal cylinder with a cap which Le Chiffre unscrewed. He inserted the nozzle of the cylinder, with an obscene deliberation, twice into each black nostril in turn, and luxuriously inhaled the benzedrine vapour. — Ian Fleming

The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth. — George Eliot

They come and go, without the drowsy observer's participation, but are essentially different from dream pictures for he is still master of his senses. They are often grotesque. I am pestered by roguish profiles, by some coarse-featured and florid dwarf with a swelling nostril or ear. At times, however, my photisms take on a rather soothing flou quality, and then I see - projected, as it were, upon the inside of the eyelid - gray figures walking between beehives, or small black parrots gradually vanishing among mountain snows, or a mauve remoteness melting beyond moving masts. — Vladimir Nabokov

Observe the reality as it is. As it is, not as you wish it to be. Perhaps your breath is deep. Perhaps your breath is shallow. Perhaps you breathed in through the left nostril. Perhaps you breathed in through the right nostril. It makes no difference. — S. N. Goenka

Pomposity and indignation grow in old age, like nostril hairs and earlobes. — Stephen Fry

The specialist looks inside your nose and announces: 'Well, all right, I'll take care of your right nostril, but I really don't handle left nostrils; — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Come quickly with me.
Inhale the divine that swoops
from nostril to blunted throat
then sneaks past guarded doors
into the hallway of your heart
where the lamplight grows. — Merle Nudelman

A New York casting director, who shall remain nameless, once said to me, 'Marcia, you have what I call the flaring-nostril look, and until you get something done about it, you will never, ever work.' — Marcia Gay Harden

He had long nostril hairs, powerfully intimidating, like an unscheduled nightmare. — Charles Bukowski

First the nerves are to be purified, then comes the power to practice Pranayama. Stopping the right nostril with the thumb, through the left nostril fill in air, according to capacity; then, without any interval, throw the air out through the right nostril, closing the left one. Again inhaling through the right nostril eject through the left, according to capacity; practicing this three or five times at four hours of the day, before dawn, during midday, in the evening, and at midnight, in fifteen days or a month — Swami Vivekananda

So scented the grim Feature, and upturn'd His nostril wide into the murky air, Sagacious of his quarry from so far. — John Milton

One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. Three drops of blood plopped out of his left nostril, hardened instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes on the prayer-mat, transformed into rubies. Lurching back until he knelt with his head once more upright, he found that the tears which had sprung to his eyes had solidified, too; and at that moment, as he brushed diamonds contemptuously from his lashes, he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man. This decision, however, made a hole in him, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber, leaving him vulnerable to women and history. Unaware of this at first, despite his recently completed medical training, he stood up, rolled the prayer-mat into a thick cheroot, and holding it under his right arm surveyed the valley through clear, diamond-free eyes. — Salman Rushdie

I went out into the garden in the morning dusk, When sorrow enveloped me like a cloud; And the breeze brought to my nostril the odor of spices, As balm of healing for a sick soul. — Moses Ibn Ezra

I'm not a journalist any more. I don't have to stick a microphone up somebody's nostril and I don't have a camera lens behind my shoulder, I think people talk to me in a much franker way. — Gerald Seymour

He was the kind of guy who won the stupid tricks contest at local bars by inhaling a silver chain up his nostril and pulling it out his mouth. — Jennifer Coburn

In North By Northwest during the scene on Mount Rushmore, I wanted Cary Grant to hide in Lincoln's nostril and then have a fit of sneezing. The Parks Commission ... was rather upset at this thought. I argued until one of their number asked me how I would like it if they had Lincoln play the scene in Cary Grant's nose.
I saw their point at once. — Alfred Hitchcock

Ah, the rheumy-eyed grandpa on the terraces inducting the lad into the mysteries of soccer: how to loathe people wearing different coloured shirts, how to feign injury, how to blow your snot onto the pitch - See, son, you press hard on one nostril to close it, and explode the green stuff out of the other. How to be vain and overpaid and have your best years behind you before you've even understood what life's about. Oh yes, I look forward to taking Lucas to the football. But — Julian Barnes

Did I arch my back when his gazes finally made it to my chest? Of course I did. And was rewarded with a nostril flare, the equivalent of a facial boner. — Alice Clayton

Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and, further, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn't the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It's not ego satisfaction; that doesn't explain screwing corpses and babies. — Valerie Solanas

If anything is wrong with your nose, they send you to Paris: there, they say, is a European specialist who cures noses. If you go to Paris, he'll look at your nose; I can only cure your right nostril, he'll tell you, for I don't cure the left nostril, that's not my speciality, but go to Vienna, there there's a specialist who will cure your left nostril. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Callers who even more unconsciously blemish-scanned or nostril-explored looked up to find horrified expressions on the video-faces at the other end. All of which resulted in videophonic stress. — David Foster Wallace

I was lying on my bed, contemplating Mason's death when Amy strolled into our cabin.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
"Wondering what would cause more damage, a paint-brush in the eye or a putty knife shoved up someone's nostril," I answered, scowling at the ceiling. — Tiffany King

The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril, and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet, and Contra-flow. — Terry Pratchett

I should wonder what courage - which is the virtue they most value - has to do with a metal ring through your nostril. — Veronica Roth

As, in Sense, that which is really within us, is (as I have said before) only Motion, caused by the action of external objects, but in appearance; to the Sight, Light and Color; to the Ear, Sound; to the Nostril, Odor, &c. — Thomas Hobbes

Amber emerged from behind the screen. But it was not Amber who stood before her. Instead, it was a smudge-faced slave girl. A tattoo sprawled across one wind-reddened cheek. A crusty sore encompassed half her upper lip and her left nostril. Her dirty hair was pulling free from a scruffy braid. Her shirt was rough cotton and her bare feet peeked out from under her patched skirts. A dirty bandage bound one of her ankles. Rough canvas work gloves had replaced the lacy ones Amber habitually wore. — Robin Hobb

The universe is forever falling apart --
No need to push the button,
It collapses at a finger's touch:
Why, it barely hangs on the tail of a sparrow's eye.

The universe is so much eye secretion,
Hordes leap from the tips
Of your nostril hairs. Lift your right hand:
It's in your palm. There's room enough
On the sparrow's eyelash for the whole.

A paltry thing, the universe:
Here is all the strength, here the greatest strength.
You and the sparrow are one
And, should he wish, he can crush you.
The universe trembles before him. — Shinkichi Takahashi

Through seven figures come sensations for a man; there is hearing for sounds, sight for the visible, nostril for smell, tongue for pleasant or unpleasant tastes, mouth for speech, body for touch, passages outwards and inwards for hot or cold breath. Through these come knowledge or lack of it. — Hippocrates

Doesn't know much, but leads the league in nostril hair. — Josh Billings

Driggs silently handed her the remainder of his own pizza, then watched with amusement as she wrestled with how to humbly accept it. Eventually she gave up on decorum and shoved the whole thing into her mouth in about two bites, a messy decision that she instantly regretted.

"You've got sauce in your nostril," Driggs informed her.

Lex sighed. "Of course I do." She grabbed a nearby leaf and tended to the situation. "Better?"

"Radiant — Gina Damico

The true Christian's nostril is to be continually attentive to the inner cesspool. — C.S. Lewis

Razo knew he was best at nothing, except maybe cramming two cherries into a single nostril. — Shannon Hale

Pranayama. Stopping the right nostril with the thumb, through the left nostril fill in air, according to capacity; then, without any interval, throw the air out through the right nostril, closing the left one. Again inhaling through the right nostril eject through the left, according to capacity; practicing this three or five times at four hours of the day, before dawn, during midday, in the evening, and at midnight, in fifteen days or a month purity of the nerves is attained; then begins Pranayama. — Swami Vivekananda