breath

The mind can make Substance, and people planets of its own With beings brighter than have been, and give A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.

—Rochdale

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a muse'  d rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!

—Keats,John

   Art cannot hold its breath too long without dying.

—Antheil, George

I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away!

—Honorius of Autun

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou soul, that art the eternity of thought, And giv'st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion.

—Wordsworth,William

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

—Goldsmith, Oliver

And the L God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

—Bible (Old Testament)

No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.

—Tennyson

As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls, to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, The breath goes now, and some say, no: 280 So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity of our love.

—Donne,John

   And what a congress of stinks!ö Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks. Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

—Rogers,Will

And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller between life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command.

—Wordsworth,William

A little while and I will be gone from among you, whither I cannot tell. From nowhere we came, into nowhere we go.What is Life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

—Haggard, Sir (Henry) Rider

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself! But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, Half dust, half deity, alike unfit To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make A conflict of its elements, and breathe The breath of degradation and of pride.

—Rochdale

But here I feel amends, The breath of Heav'n fresh-blowing, pure and sweet, With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.

—Milton,John

From scenes like these, old S's grandeur springs, That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 'An honest man's the noble work of G'. See Pope 660:25.

—Burns, Robert

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

The sea of faith Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.

—Arnold, Matthew

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.

—Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)

If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly: it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, 'a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on'.

—Springsteen, Bruce

Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

—Gray,Thomas

Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walked, Larger than human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before.

—Tennyson

He cried inawhisperat some image, at some visionöhe cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: 'The horror! The horror!'

—Korzeniowski

   The odour of sanctity was clearly discernible from his breath and person.

—Wall, Mervyn

Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.

—Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Her cabined ample Spirit, It fluttered and failed for breath. Tonight it doth inherit The vasty hall of death.

—Arnold, Matthew

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair.

—Keats,John

The last breath I drew in he wished might be through a pipe and exhaled in a pun.

—Lamb, Charles

A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule allöthat is myself.

—Aung San Suu Kyi

I love thee with the love I seemed to lose With my lost Saints,öI love thee with the breath Smiles, tears, of all my life!öand, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

—Browning, Elizabeth ne¤  e Barrett

Our Meistersinger, thou set breath in steel; And it was thou who on the boldest heel Stood up and flung the span on even wing Of that great Bridge, our Myth, whereof I sing.

—Crane, (Harold) Hart

The hills tell each other, and the listening Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned Up to thy holy feet visit our clime. Come o'er the eastern hills and let our winds Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste Thy morn and evening breath. Scatter thy pearls Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

—Blake,William

I want for one moment to make our undiscovered country leap into the eyes of the Old World. It must be mysterious, as though floating. It must take the breath. It must be 'one of those islands†'.

—Beauchamp

The love of our neighbour is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescence out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.

—MacDonald, George

We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriched bya new beauty: the beautyof speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breathöa roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot ismore beautiful than theVictory of Samothrace.

—Marinetti, Emilio FilippoTomasso

If I were fierce and bald and short of breath I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

—Sassoon, Siegfried Louvain

I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven Was blowing on my body, felt within A correspondent breeze, that gently moved With quickening virtue, but is now become A tempest, a redundant energy, Vexing its own creation.

—Wordsworth,William

The puritanical potentialities of sciencehavenever been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchicallyorganized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of 'decency'. The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to.

—Lezama Lima,Jose¤

The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death.

—Thomas, Dylan Marlais

In this universe, Where the least things control the greatest, where The faintest breath that breathes can move a world.

—Wordsworth,William

Best while you have it use your breath, There is no drinking after death.

—Fo, Dario

To those who wait with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only this to say. You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning. See Fry 340:25.

—Thatcher, Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness

What childishness is it that while there's breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way round?

—Bishop, Elizabeth

All my house, But now, steamed like a bath with her thick breath. A lawyer could not have been heard; nor scarce Another woman, such a hail of words She has let fall.

—Jonson, Ben

I do not see them here; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 'I am thyself,öwhat hast thou done to me?' 'And Iöand Iöthyself,' (lo! each one saith,) 'And thou thyself to all eternity!'

—Rossetti, Dante Gabriel