Poul Anderson Quotes

Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived.

Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment.

Consider The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:-- We are as they; Like them we fade away As doth a leaf.

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.

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

Even though in the world you are the most learned scholar of the time, Behold the vanishing of this world and this time!

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time. To journey is to be born and die each minute...All the elements of life are in constant flight from us, with darkness and clarity intermingled, the vision and the eclipse; we look and hasten, reaching out our hands to clutch; every happening is a bend in the road...and suddenly we have grown old. We have a sense of shock and gathering darkness; ahead is a black doorway; the life that bore us is a flagging horse, and a veiled stranger is waiting in the shadows to unharness us.

In the end, the wind takes everything, doesn't it? And why not? Why other? If the sweetness of our lives did not depart, there would be no sweetness at all.

Life is only a flicker of melted ice.

A man, when he burns, leaves only a handful of ashes. No woman can hold him. The wind must blow him away.

Time wastes too fast : every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen ; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more -- every thing presses on -- whilst thou are twisting that lock, -- see! it grows grey ; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make!

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

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

The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

In life, and in sports, we all know that nothing lasts forever.

Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.

I see that all of us who live are nothing but images or insubstantial shadow.

O what is life, if we must hold it thus as wind-blown sparks hold momentary fire?

Our lives feel like these epochs, but really, we are dust in the wind.

This life at best is but an inn, And we the passengers.

My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

Life doesn't last; art doesn't last. It doesn't matter.

Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives.