Sir Roger told them, with the air of a man who would not give his judgement rashly, that much might be said on both sides.

-Addison,Joseph
  In The Spectator, no.122, 20  Jul.

And nowe in the winter, when men kill the fat swine They get the bladder and blow it great and thin, With many beans and peason put within: It ratleth, soundeth, and shineth clere and fayre While it is throwen and caste up in the ayre, Each one contendeth and hath a great delite With foote and with hands the bladder for to smite; If it fall to grounde, they lifte it up agayne, But this waye to labour they count in no payne.

-Anonymous
Medieval verse, one of the earliest descriptions of football in England.

I am very fond of fresh air and royalties.

-Ashford, Daisy Mary Margaret
  TheYoung Visiters, or Mr Salteena's Plan, ch.5.

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

-Atwood, Margaret Eleanor
True Stories,'Variation on the Word Sleep'.

Some thirty inches from my nose The frontier of my Person goes, And all the untilled air between Is private pagus or demesne. Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes I beckon you to fraternize, Beware of rudely crossing it: I have no gun, but I can spit.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'Prologue:  The Birth of  Architecture', postscript.

   Purpose apart, perched like an umpire, dozes, Dreams golden balls whirring through indigo. Clay blurs the whitewash but day still encloses The albinos, bonded in their flick and flow. Playing in musicked gravity, the pair Score liquid Euclids in foolscaps of air.

-Avison, Margaret
  Winter Sun,'Tennis'.

We wove a web in childhood, A web of sunny air; We dug a spring in infancy Of water pure and fair; We sowed in youth a mustard seed, We cut an almond rod; We are now grown up to riper ageö Are they withered in the sod?

-Bronte«  , Charlotte
  'We Wove a Web in Childhood'.

  If I should die, thinkonly this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich dust a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

-Brooke, Rupert Chawner
  'The Soldier'.

We redesigned everything but the air in the tires.

-Caldwell, Philip
  Of the development of the Taurus, which was to become America's best-selling car. In Fortune, 3  Apr.

The creation of music is just as natural as the air we breathe.I believemusic isreallya freething, and any way you can enjoy it, you should.

-Coleman, Ornette
  Sleeve-note, Something Else!

Belove'  d, what are names but air? Choose thou whatever suits the line; Call me Sappho, call me Chloris, Call me Lalage or Doris, Only, only call meThine.

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  'Names', a translation from G E Lessing's German original (first published in the Morning Post,1803).

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum.

-Collins,William
  Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Evening', l.9^14.

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve! While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light; While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely rends thy robes.

-Collins,William
  Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Evening', l.41^8.

The evil of it is, that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushingofthelarger worlds, and cannot seethemasthey circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^3  Of the world of fashion. Bleak House, ch.2.

Musicians wrestle everywhereö All dayöamong the crowded air I hear the silver strifeö Andöwakingölong before the mornö Such transport breaks upon the town I think it that 'New Life!'

-Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
c.1860  Complete Poems, no.157 (first published1891).

Inebriate of Airöam Iö And Debauchee of Dewö Reelingöthro endless summer daysö From inns of Molten Blueö

-Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
c.1860  Complete Poems, no.214 (first published1861).

I will not look upon the quickening sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run; The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages.

-Donne,John
c.1595  Elegies, no.12,'His Parting from Her'.

The air isnot sofull of motes, of atoms, asthe church is of mercies.

-Donne,John
  Sermons,'Christmas Day,1624'.

   Neat Marlowe, bathed in theThespian springs, Had in him those brave translunary things That the first poets had; his raptures were All air and fire, which made his verses clear, For that fine madness still he did retain Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.

-Drayton, Michael
  'To My Most Dearly Loved Henry Reynolds, Esquire, of Poets and Poesie'.

My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require.

-Elgar, Sir Edward
Quoted in R  J Buckley Sir Edward Elgar (1905), ch.4.