Short Quotes
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After a very long year we've got a very short knight.
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More Short Quotes
The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful, and then only for a short while.
Albert Einstein— The New Quotable Einstein
The wild November come at last beneath a veil of rain. The night wind blows its folds aside, her face is full of pain. The latest of her race, she takes the Autumn's vacant throne, She has but one short moon to live, and she must live alone.
richard henry stoddard— November
If you had said to a young Syd, ‘Look, this is your bargain in life, you know, you’re going to do this fantastic stuff, but it won’t be forever, it’ll be this short period. There’s the dotted line, are you going to sign for this?’ I suspect, maybe, a lot of people would sign for that, for making their mark.
syd barrett— Bob Klose, The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story (2003)
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))
It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.
Dalai Lama— Kindness, Clarity, and Insight (1984) Tenzin Gyatso
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor.
thomas gray— Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, St. 8 (1750)
What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding.
friedrich nietzsche— Friedrich Nietzsche, On truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.
For 60 years Gross Domestic Product, or GDP for short, has been the yardstick by which the world has measured and understood economic and social progress. However, it has failed to capture some of the factors that make a difference in people’s lives and contribute to their happiness, such as security, leisure,income distribution and a clean environment–including the kinds of factors which growth itself needs to be sustainable.
— Joseph Stiglitz, in Beyond GDP: Measuring the impact of Operational Programmes in relation to economic growth and sustainable development at a local/regional level., QeC-ERAN
Life is too short to silver over this tarnish. The gods, employed to haunt and punish husbands, have no hand for trigger-fine distinctions, their myopia makes all error mortal.
robert lowell— NewYear's Eve (1968)
If I were fierce and bald and short of breath I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
— 1918 'Base Details'.
I could have been a serious athlete, only to have my promise cut short when I discovered Woodbines and women. Thankfully I have long since given up the former, and the latter have long since given up on me—except, of course, for the lovely Lady Stratford, who for reasons beyond my comprehension still tolerates my presence.
lord stratford— maiden speech to the House of Lords, 20 July 2005; quoted by United Kingdom Parliament World Wide Web Service
Let Winter come! let polar spirits sweep The darkening world, and tempest-troubled deep! Though boundless snows the withered heath deform, And the dim sun scarce wanders through the storm, Yet shall the smile of social love repay, With mental light, the melancholy day! And, when its short and sullen noon is o'er, The ice-chained waters slumbering on the shore, How bright the fagots in his little hall Blaze on the hearth, and warm the pictured wall!
thomas campbell— Pleasures of Hope, Part II, line 115–124 (1799)
Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your own profession. Do not indulge yourselves to judge of things by the first glimpse, or a short and superficial view of them; for this will fill the mind with errors and prejudices, and give it a wrong turn and ill habit of thinking, and make much work for retraction.
Isaac Watts— The Improvement of the Mind (1727), Ch. I, General Rules for the Improvement of Knowlege, Rule VII - 1885 edition online
Empires are synonymous with centralized if occasionally schismatized hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economically privileged class retaining its advantages through usually a judicious use of oppression and skilled manipulation of both the society’s information dissemination systems and its lesser as a rule nominally independent power systems. In short, it’s all about dominance.
iain banks— Chapter 1 (p. 91)
"Dominicus Corea had a posthumous son, Lewis Corea who became the Dissawe of Uva. Sir Paul Peiris wrote that `With the disappearance of Dominicus Corea, came a short lull in military operations of which the Portuguese officials availed themselves to give free rein to that rapacity which so frequently disgraced their careers in the East’. Dominicus Corea was succeeded by his brother Simon, as Dissawe of the Sat Korale, Kotte and Sitawaka."
dominicus corea— By Deva Corea in his article 'Dominicus Corea of Kotte.' [7]
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, Behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.
william shakespeare— Lysander, scene i
Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day. … The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.
emma goldman— Emma Goldman, The Failure of Christianity (1913).
It is the relentless onward march of the texters, the SMS (short Message Service) vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago.They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped.
john humphrys— "I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language," The Daily Mail (2007-09-24)
Being chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee is like jumping off a cliff. The thrill is very short.
— 1993 NPR broadcast, 2 Nov.
Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum.
william collins— 1747 Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Evening', l.9-14.
The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
ralph waldo emerson— The Divinity College Address (1838)
To regard human beings as tools — as instruments — for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker — they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement.
alfred korzybski— Chapter: Capitalistic Era
When I left Nashville I went to Texas because that's where I came from, and because I was playing in Texas a lot in different places. And I saw hippies and rednecks drinking beer together and smoking dope together and having a good time together and I knew it was possible to get all groups of people together – long hair, short hair, no hair – and music would bring them together.
willie nelson— Hann, Michael (May 17, 2012). "Willie Nelson: 'If We Made Marijuana Legal, We'd Save a Whole Lotta Money and Lives'". The Guardian (Guardian News and Media Ltd.). Retrieved on May 20, 2012.
4. Never look encouragingly at the brass, except with a short glance to give an important cue.5. But never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight: if you can hear them at all they are still too strong. [emphasis added]
— Recollections and Reflections (second edition: 1953), "Ten Golden Rules: for the album of a young conductor", p. 38. Widely circulated in paraphrase:Never look at the Trombones, you'll only encourage them.
If freedom is short of weapons, we must compensate with willpower.
Adolf Hitler— speech in Landsberg, 5 November 1925
In high school in the early Sixties, I dreamed of intellectual work by women that would match the highest male standards and set men on their ear. A lot of women have done a lot of academic work since then, but most of them fall short of that standard.
camille paglia— p. 206 (Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf)
Muslims have a credibility problem. In the modern era, we have a tendency to believe and repeat wild theories, with our only criteria for accepting those theories being that they lend support to pre-existing attitudes. It takes an extremely sympathetic person to overlook such a deficiency, and sympathy for Muslims in a post 9/11 West is in short supply.
— Our Credibility Problem: It's a Conspiracy
Art indeed is long, but life is short.
Andrew Marvell— Andrew Marvell, Upon the Death of Lord Hastings (1649), last line
