Marcus Terentius Varro Quotes

Little fly, thy summer's play My thoughtless hand has brushed away. Am not I a fly like thee? Or art not thou a man like me? For I dance and drink and sing, Till some blind hand shall brush my wing!

What, if as said, man is a bubble.

Isn't it strange how we move out lives for another day? Like skipping a beat, what if a great wave should wash us all away?

Look what a little vain dust we are!

The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.

We are things of a day. What are we? What are we not? The shadow of a dream is man, no more.

I always know I can die at any moment.

Mortality defines the human condition.

Life is an incurable disease.

A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.

It was despairing to find out that I am mortal.

We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

I think I'm very conscientious of how precious life is and how quickly life can be taken away from you, especially at times when it can be least expected.

You're never promised your next breath.

Despite all the achievements of civilisation, the human being is still one of the most vulnerable creatures on earth.

Hurried and worried until we're buried, and there's no curtain call, Lifes a very funny proposition after all.

I feel our relationship to life, to the rest of the world, is very tenuous. It feels fleeting.

We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie asleep.

We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.

I stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years from now. In a hundred years everybody here-me included-will have disappeared from the face of the earth and turned into ashes or dust. A weird thought, but everything in front of me starts to seem unreal, like a gust of wind could blow it all away.

Creatures of a day, what is any one? What is he not? Man is but a dream of a shadow. Yet when there comes as a gift of heaven a gleam of sunshine, there rest upon men a radiant light and, aye, a gentle life.

How odd to watch a mortal kindle / Then to dwindle day by day / Knowing their bright souls are tinder / And the wind will have its way

We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality.

Life is a winking light in the darkness.