Edmund Burke Quotes

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

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

Mankind is a dream of a shadow.

Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives.

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!

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

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.

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.

What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

Man's wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.

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

The likeness of the world? A shadow! And world's glory? A dream!

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

You only live a short time... and you are dead a long time.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

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

Life is short, and, once somebody is gone, they're gone.

Life doesn't last; art doesn't last. It doesn't matter.

Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream But of a shadow, summed with all his substance.

Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived.