Ian Anderson Quotes

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

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

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

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

Surely 't is better, when summer is over To die when all fair things are fading away.

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

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.

All good things pass away.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

Life is short, and, once somebody is gone, they're gone.

There's a sadness about love, a melancholy and a sadness about beauty. It's just part of the human experience of living on this planet.

Nothing is forever in the Theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot and then its gone.

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

Nothing comes back. The eye sees for a moment, the ear hears, but look, now it is gone.

A cherry pie is . . . ephemeral. From the moment it emerges from the oven it begins a steep decline: from too hot to edible to cold to stale to mouldy, and finally to a post-pie state where only history can tell you that it was once considered food. The pie is a parable of human life.

Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away.

Life is a toy made of glass; it appears to be of inestimable price, but in reality it is very cheap.

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.

Nothing gold can stay.

The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.

This greatest mortal consolation, which we derive from the transitoriness of all things-from the right of saying, in every conjuncture, "This, too, will pass away.

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.