Odor Power

Odors powerfully impact human beings, as evidenced by the perfume industry. Quotes about “smell” also show the power of odors. For example:

• Benjamin Franklin: Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

• Diane Ackerman: Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.

• Doug Coupland: Try not thinking of peeling an orange. Try not imagining the juice running down your fingers, the soft inner part of the peel. The smell. Try and you can't. The brain doesn't process negatives.

• Margaret Thatcher: I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air.

• Oliver Wendell Holmes: Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.

• Shakespeare: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.