Shortness Of Life Quotes

• It's not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.

  Seneca the Younger

  Life, Waste, Shortness

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• The shortness of life cannot dissuade us from its pleasures, nor console us for its pains.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Life, Pain, Pleasure

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• Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honors, then to retire.

  Joseph Addison

  Life, Business, Men

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...”, p.304

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• Life is long if you know how to use it.

  Seneca the Younger

  Long, Use, Life Is

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• The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death. When I look ahead, all I can see is my final demise. And they say, But maybe not for seventy or eighty years. And I say, Maybe you, but me, I'm already gone.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Thinking, Years, Finals

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.53, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When we realize the shortness of life, we begin to see the importance of making every moment count.

  Dillon Burroughs

  Realizing, Moments, Importance

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• the time of life is short; To spend that shortness basely were too long.

  William Shakespeare

  Life Is Short, Long, Life Is

  'Henry IV, Part 1' (1597) act 5, sc. 2, l. 81

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• As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist.

  Protagoras

  Mean, Knowing, Religion

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• It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.

  Seneca the Younger

  Use, Littles, Ill

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• Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Inspirational, Time, Life Is Too Short

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• The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Wisdom, May, Being The Best

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.46, Publishdrive

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• The vistas of possibility are only limited by the shortness of life.

  Winston Churchill

  Possibility, Vistas, Shortness

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• Nature has given man no better thing than shortness of life.

  Pliny the Elder

  Life, Nature, Men

  "Historia Naturalis", VII. 51. 3 in "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, (pp. 440-455), 1922.

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• I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.

  Laura Marling

  Country, Book, Night

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• So far are we generally from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations as nothing but along train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us which are only excusable in the prime of life.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Passion, Thinking, Expectations

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• Consider in what condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of life, the boundless abyss of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Men, Past, Soul

  Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2016). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.130, Enhanced Media Publishing

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• The thought of eternity consoles for the shortness of life.

  Guillaume-Chretien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes

  Eternity, Shortness, Console

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• To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Wisdom, Time

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.207, Penguin

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• The shortness of life, which we all discuss, but which is very clear to me at the moment, makes keeping and spreading a joyful peace more crucial than ever before. Let us keep our minds on what matters, which is our work, which is astonishment and gratitude. From this quiet magic comes a power for all other new years wishes to come true.

  Martha Beck

  New Year, Gratitude, What Matters

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