pulse quotes

The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.

- Sir Kingsley Amis
  Lucky  Jim, ch.6.

Onlybut this is rare When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafened ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.

- Matthew Arnold
  Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'The Buried Life', l.77^87.

   There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman's pulse.

- Laurence Sterne
  A SentimentalJourney,'The Pulse, Paris'.

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.

-William Wordsworth
  'She was a Phantom of delight', l.21^8 (published1807).