Art cannot hold its breath too long without dying.

-Antheil, George
  Bad Boy of Music.

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
  'Dover Beach', stanza 3.

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

-Arnold, Matthew
  Poems:  A New Edition,'Requiescat'.

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

-Aung San Suu Kyi
c.  AD 170^180  Meditations, bk.2, no.2 (translated by M Staniforth).

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)
ORDGenesis 2:7.

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
  'Questions of  Travel'.

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
  Poetical Sketches,'To Spring'.

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
  Poems,'Sonnets from the Portuguese', sonnet 43.

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
COTIAOD1785  'The Cotter's Saturday Night', stanza19. The last line is in fact a misquotation of Pope;'noble' was corrected to'noblest' in the1794 edition of Burns's poems.

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
  The Dream, stanza1.

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
  Manfred, act1, sc.2.

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
  Kurtz's final words. Heart of Darkness, pt.3 (first published in Blackwood's Magazine, collected in Youth:  A Narrative, and Two Other Stories,1902).

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
  On Whitman and Brooklyn Bridge. The Bridge,'Cape Hatteras'.

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
c.1595^1605  'A  Valediction: Forbidding Mourning', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

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

-Fo, Dario
  The Bloody Brother, act 2, sc.2, song (with Ben  Jonson, George Chapman and Philip Massinger).

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
  The Deserted Village, l.51^6.

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
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.41^4.

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
  Dying words of the  African chief Umbopa in King Solomon's Mines.  John Peter Turner in The North-West Mounted Police (1950) credited them to Crowfoot (c.1830^1890), chief of the Blackfoot Indians, who died in his teepee overlooking the Bow River,  Alberta, 25  Apr1890, and this attribution gained popular acceptance.

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
  'I Remember'.

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)
  A Shropshire Lad, no.4.