Marcus Terentius Varro Quotes

A human being is only breath and shadow.

Life is an incurable disease.

This planet Earth, the act of putting a roof over our heads, our flesh and blood existence, it's all very temporary.

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

We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.

At the end of the day, we came into the world naked, and that's the way we're going to go.

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!

We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.

One idea I explore in my stand-up show is whether, if you try looking at the universe rationally and avoid coping mechanisms like mysticism or religion, you can still be happy knowing you are going to die after a brief time on this spinning ball.

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

I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you're not.

I have always been very obsessed with time. Time's passage makes us all very vulnerable and because we all experience it in our own way, it can make us feel very alone.

Life is wasted on the living.

How can we live and die and never know the difference?

You don't waste your entire life waiting to go back to dust.

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

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.

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

I find life so shocking in general. Everything about it surprises me.

Anything that confirms for me the transitory nature of reality isn't bad. It's a good lesson in human hubris.

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.

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

It even feels absurd to be writing or singing a song at all - in the context of actual death, being alive feels absurd.

What's the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die, and then it makes sense.