Noun
A colorless nonmetallic element, tasteless and odorless, comprising four fifths of the atmosphere by volume. It is chemically very inert in the free state, and as such is incapable of supporting life (hence the name azote still used by French chemists); but it forms many important compounds, as ammonia, nitric acid, the cyanides, etc, and is a constituent of all organized living tissues, animal or vegetable. Symbol N. Atomic weight 14. It was formerly regarded as a permanent noncondensible gas, but was liquefied in 1877 by Cailletet of Paris, and Pictet of Geneva.
Source: Webster's dictionaryThe nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. Carl Sagan
Many years ago it was taught that plants and animals were composed of different materials: plants, of a chemical substance of three elements,- carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; animals of one of four elements, nitrogen being added to the other three. Asa Gray
Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organise themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? Robert M. Pirsig
All we are is a lot of talking nitrogen. Arthur Miller
Agricultural husbandry essentially maintains the balance of bound nitrogen. Fritz Haber
Gaseous nitrogen combines with gaseous hydrogen in simple quantitative proportions to produce gaseous ammonia. Fritz Haber