Henry Van Dyke Quotes

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyone the sculpted flower.

Because beautiful things never last. Not roses nor snow… And not fireworks, either

And you're sorry that the ephemeral beauty has faded so rapidly, so irretrievably, that it flashed so deceptively and pointlessly before your eyes - you're sorry, for you didn't even have time to fall in love.

And any small moments of intense, flaring beauty such as this morning's will be utterly forgotten, dissolved by time like a super-8 film left out in the rain, without sound, and quickly replaced by thousands of silently growing trees.

She seemed fragile like a moonflower – destined to bloom for a single lovely night, and then to fade and fall.

Beautiful things never last. That’s why fireflies flash.

Loveliest of lovely things are they on earth that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower.

How small a part of time they share, That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! It is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life... are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these.

Stardom is like making love in a hammock - a happy experience but one of uncertain duration.

Though one were fair as roses His beauty clouds and closes.

Beautiful is the bloom of youth, but it lasts only for a short time.

Everything is about to disappear. You've got to hurry up if you still want to see things.

How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?

I would have stayed forever within the garden of Re-mose's childhood, but time is a mother's enemy.

And here you are hurried, And here you are gone; And here is the love, That it's all built upon.

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us - for that moment only.

Beauty's of a fading nature. Has a season and is gone!