Edmund Spenser Quotes

Insignificant mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then again fade away and are dead.

This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower.

Life is short. If you doubt me, ask a butterfly. Their average life span is a mere five to fourteen days.

The seed of mortals broods o'er passing things, and hath nought surer than the smoke-cloud's shadow.

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.

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

As leaves on the trees, such is the life of man.

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

A mass of dust, world's momentary slave, Is man, in state of our old Adam made, Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade.

The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

Mankind is a dream of a shadow.

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

We are but phantoms ... and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights.

How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.

Mortalhood is a fine state to visit, but you'd better not call it home.

These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

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.

Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.

What, if as said, man is a bubble.

I see the state of all of us who live, nothing more than phantoms or a weightless shadow.