The subjects’ core consciousness was unstable or too rarefied.
Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
The sun shone somewhat to the left and behind him and brightly lit up the enormous panorama which, rising like an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied atmosphere.
Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song, France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarmé but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer’s Phæacians.
James Joyce
Ulysses
The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti.
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse Five
Freeing himself from all business connections with human beings—even his anonymous tenants in Kurla and Worli, in Matunga and Mazagaon and Mahim—he liquefied his assets, and entered the rarefied and abstract air of financial speculation.
Salman Rushdie
Midnight's Children: A Novel
There was always sunshine, always a tiny sticking in the throat from the rarefied air.
Heller, Joseph
Catch-22
Rarefied enough for you?” Damned silly idea!
Frank Herbert
Chapterhouse: Dune