Edward Young Quotes

A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.

Death carries off a man busy picking flowers with an besotted mind, like a great flood does a sleeping village.

Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.

Life is short but it is wide. This too shall pass.

Life is a frail moth flying Caught in the web of the years that pass.

The days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning.

So passed the seasons then, so they pass now, and so they will pass in time to come, while we come and go like leaves of the tree that fall and are soon forgotten.

We say that life is sweet, its satisfactions deep. All this we say, as we sleepwalk our time through years of days and nights. We let time cascade over us like a waterfall, believing it to be never-ending. Yet each day that touches us, and every man in the world, is unique; irredeemable; over. And just another Monday.

The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

The brief span of our poor unhappy life to its final hour Is hastening on; and while we drink and call for gay wreaths, Perfumes, and young girls, old age creeps upon us, unperceived.

I didn't realize it, but the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone.

Our lives disappear, even as we live them.

The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.

All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.

Time is a river rolling into nowhere. We must live while we can, and we'll drink our cup of laughter.

But when to-morrow comes, yesterday's morrow will have been already spent: and lo! a fresh morrow will be for ever making away with our years, each just beyond our grasp.

Our lives fade behind us before we die.

Life is a memory, and then it is nothing.

Like water spilt upon the ground--alas, Our little lives flow swiftly on and pass; Yet may they bring rich harvests and green grass!

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned.

Life really is very brief.

There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands. And yet, this pouring, this flood of encounters, struggles, dreams...