Conrad Aiken Quotes

Time is not kind to everything.

Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

Time destroys everything.

Time is the devourer of all things.

How terrible a thing time is.

The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes bring you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.

Prettiness dies first.

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

I don't think of death in a romantic way anymore.

Everything that rises sets, and everything that grows, grows old.

It is useless to contend with the irresistible power of Time, which goes on continually creating by a process of constant destruction.

I believe that time destroys everything. You can take one beautiful apple, red. After a while, it becomes shrivelled and full of worms, just like what happens to us.

Beauty is but a flower, which wrinkles will devour.

Oh, how swiftly the glory of the world passes away!

Our birth is nothing but our death begun, As tapers waste the moment they take fire.

Time is death.

Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be.

All things which exist in time must perish

When we look on the roses and gaiety of youth, the mournful idea of mortality is altogether alien to our thoughts. We have heard of it as a speculation and a tale, but nothing but experience can bring it home to us.

Dust, in the end, settles on everything.

Nothing grows old faster than the new.

Time is the rider that breaks youth.