The most magical moment in the theater is a silence so complete that you can't even hear people breathe. It means that you've got them.

-Cronyn, Hume
  In Time, 2  Apr.

In the dark room where I began My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her.

-Masefield,John Edward
  'C.L.M.'.

Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast, When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last.

-Pope, Alexander
  The Rape of the Lock, canto 3, l.157^8.

Anger and tenderness: my selves. And now I can believe they breathe in me as angels, not polarities.

-Rich, Adrienne Cecile
AWild Patience HasTaken MeThis Far,'Integrity'.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, council, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windyTroy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.6^24.

I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect lightö I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot.

-Tennyson
  Idylls of the King,'Guinevere', l.640^3.