Fleeting Quotes
More Fleeting Quotes
Life is short, even for those who live a long time, and we must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad, loyal or corrupt, from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them. We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.
sarah bernhardt— Ch. 33 (My Double Life (1907))
Good theories of the mind must span at least three different scales of time: slow, for the billions of years in which our brains have survivied; fast, for the fleeting weeks and months of childhood; and in between, the centuries of growth of our ideas through history.
marvin minsky— Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind (1988) Ch.1
Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
thomas gray— Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, lines 41-4 (1751)
So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade; All love, all liking, all delight Lies drowned with us in endless night. Then while time serves, and we are but decaying; Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying.
Robert Herrick— 1648 'Corinna's Going a Maying'.
As drifting logs of wood may haply meet On ocean's waters surging to and fro, And having met, drift once again apart, So, fleeting is the intercourse of men. E'en as a traveler meeting with the shade Of some o'erhung tree, awhile reposes, Then leaves its shelter to pursue his ways, So men meet friends, then part with them for ever.
— Translation of the Code of Manu. In Words of Wisdom.
Can storied urn, or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
thomas gray— St. 11. (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750))
There is no better feeling than the feeling that I have done something right. That feeling comes so rarely and is so fleeting that I can never really enjoy it. So in a way, it's not a good feeling at all.
john s. hall— October 7
One of those passing rainbow dreams, Half light, half shade, which fancy's beams Paint on the fleeting mists that roll, In trance or slumber, round the soul!
thomas moore— Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Fire Worshippers, Stanza 54.
Now from head to foot I am marble-constant: now the fleeting moon No planet is of mine.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act V, scene 2, line 238.
Art is long, and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— 1838 'A Psalm of Life', stanza 4. In Knickerbocker or NewYork Monthly Magazine, Sep. Collected in Voices of the Night (1839).
O fleeting joys Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!
john milton— 1665 Adam's lament. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.10, l.741-2.
For she was beautifulher beauty made The bright world dim, and everything beside Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.
Percy Bysshe Shelley— 1820 'TheWitch of Atlas', stanza12.
Then, with that faint fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful,Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last.
— 1939 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', in the NewYorker,18 Mar.
Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. [...] For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form—it may be called fleeting or eternal—is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.
walter benjamin— A Berlin Chronicle (1932–, unfinished), in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings – vol. 2, pt. 2: 1931-1934, ed. Michael William Jennings, Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 612
This Life is a fleeting breath,And whither and how shall I go,When I wander away with DeathBy a path that I do not know?
louise chandler moulton— When I wander away with Death.
Ah, fortune and fame shall follow me...and I shall dwell in the world of the chosen for a few moments of fleeting ecstasy; ere the seven burly lads turn into creditors and hustle me off to debtors' prison at last.
hunter s. thompson— Letter to Porter Bibb III (6 February 1957), p. 44
How fleeting the sorrows of youth, how slight the foundations on which the young build towers of despair
ella wheeler wilcox— From Forward to Yesterdays Gay & Hancock 1910 edition kindle ebook ASIN
To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg— K 29 (Notebook K (1789-1793))
Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— St. 4Cf. Andrew Marvell, Upon the Death of Lord Hastings (1649): "Art indeed is long, but life is short"
Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.
marcus aurelius— III, 10. (Book III)
I, the solitary fish, a fish apart (apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish), write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two whose glittering scales, so fleeting, may only be the dark's embarrassed wink.
wisława szymborska— "In Heraclitus' River"
Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.
tennessee williams— The Timeless World of Play, an introductory essay to The Rose Tattoo (1951)
Adieu! 'tis love's last greeting, The parting hour is come! And fast thy soul is fleeting To seek its starry home.
— Pierre-Jean de Béranger, L'Adieu. Free translation.
As distant prospects please us, but when near We find but desert rocks and fleeting air.
samuel garth— Samuel Garth, The Dispensatory, canto iii, line 27.
Already, a conscious courage is coming to life. Here are some of the painters: Picasso , Braque , Delaunay , Le Fauconnier. . . they are highly enlightened, and do not believe in the stability of any system, even if it were to call itself classical art. . . Their reason is poised between the pursuit of the fleeting and a mania for the eternal.
— Jean Metzinger Note sur la Peinture (1910)
Dear Land to which Desire forever flees; Time doth no present to our grasp allow, Say in the fixed Eternal shall we seize At last the fleeting Now?
Lytton— Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Corn Flowers, Book I. The First Violets.
We must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad , loyal or corrupt , from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions , either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them.
— Sarah Bernhardt in: Elizabeth Silverthorne Sarah Bernhardt, Infobase Publishing, 2003, p.104
How fleeting is the world ... Yet it survives It is ourselves that fade from it and our ephemeral lives.
— Angelus Silesius, in Messenger of the Heart: The Book of Angelus Silesius with Observations by ..., p.36
