Walter Scott Quotes

Happiness is brief. It will not stay. God batters at its sails.

Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow.

Such is the life of a man. Moments of joy, obliterated by unforgettable sadness. There's no need to tell the children that.

We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt.

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; a shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; a flower that dies when it begins to bud; a doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Sunrise doesn't last all morning, a cloudburst doesn't last all day, seems my love is up and has left you with no warning. It's not always going to be this grey. All things must pass, all things must pass away.

Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn't happiness last for ever? For ever wasn't a bit too long.

Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing.

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

memories fall apart too.

O fairest flower! no sooner blown but blasted, Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.

little sun little moon little dog and a little to eat and a little to love and a little to live for in a little room filled with little mice who gnaw and dance and run while I sleep waiting for a little death in the middle of a little morning in a little city in a little state my little mother dead my little father dead in a little cemetery somewhere. I have only a little time to tell you this: watch out for little death when he comes running but like all the billions of little deaths it will finally mean nothing and everything: all your little tears burning like the dove, wasted.

Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

Love is like a flower, even the most beautiful kind dies.

Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.

When I have plucked the rose, I cannot give it vital growth again, It needs must wither. I'll smell it on the tree.

I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.

Look at the fate of summer flowers, which blow at daybreak, droop ere even-song.

The things that I loved were very frail. Very fragile. I didn't know that. I thought they were indestructible. They weren't.

Please is frail like a dewdrop, while it laughs it dies. But sorrow is strong and abiding. Let sorrowful love wake in your eyes.

The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief or grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have been Very pretty.

There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal--