Ebenezer Elliott Quotes

What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!

She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show Life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, ‘All are shadows!—all are passing!—all is past!

Life is but sighs; and, when they cease, 'tis over.

The greatest surprise in life to me is the brevity of life.

The Enlightened one has told you in never-to-be-forgotten words that this little span of life is but a passing shadow, a fleeting thing.

We like to think of life as a constant ... Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat.

For mortal kind taketh thought only for the day, and hath no more surety than the shadow of smoke.

in this short life that only lasts ah hour how much-how little-is within our power.

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.

Nature has given man no better thing than shortness of life.

Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind.

Our lives fade behind us before we die.

Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.

For this I see, that we, all we that live, Are but vain shadows, unsubstantial dreams.

Lives are mere blips on the canvas of eternity.

This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.

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

Stop and consider! life is but a day

Continuously thou wilt look at human things as smoke and nothing at all; especially if thou reflectest at the same time, that what has once changed will never exist again in the infinite duration of time. But thou, in what a brief space of time is thy existence? And why art thou not content to pass through this short time in an orderly way?

You are here for but an instant, and you mustn't take yourself too seriously

Our lives ... are but a little while, so let them run as sweetly as you can, and give no thought to grief from day to day. For time is not concerned to keep our hopes, but hurries on its business, and is gone.

Life is short and we have scarcely begun to live when we are called to die.

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!