LIFE IS TOO SHORT
 PHILOSOPHICAL QUOTES, EXTRACTS OF POEMS AND A COMMENT ON THE BREVITY OF LIFE.

Right: Marcus Aurelius, a roman emperor and philosopher of the 2nd Century, gave us some of the most beautiful reflexions on life's short span.


The brevity of life is one of the more common themes of human existential thought. There is authentic poetry in many ancient reflexions on this brevity, and the inevitability of death and nothingness.

As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. But the wind passes over, and soon all disappears; and his place will no more exist.
PSamls, Bible

Insignificant mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but soon fade away and are dead.
Homer, Century IX b.C., Greek poet, Iliad

Having glimpsed a small part of life, men rise up and disappear as smoke, knowing only what each one has learned.
Empedocles, 483-430 b. C., Greek Philosopher, in On Nature, of Sextus Empiricus.

Time is a violent torrent; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by, and another takes its place, before this too will be swept away.
Marcus Aurelius, 121-180, roman emperor and philosopher, Thoughts

Every instant of time is a pinprick of eternity. All things are insignificant, easily changed, vanishing away.
Marcus Aurelius, 121-180, roman emperor and philosopher, Thoughts

Our existence is a short circuit of light between two eternities of darkness.
Vladimir Nabokov, 1889-1977, Russian writer, Na outra margem da memória

Life’s short span forbids us to enter on far reaching hopes.
Horace, 65-8 b. C., roman poet, Odes

Necessary, since every moment in our lives is marked by death, like a shadow from another realm, it appear to us like a vanishing point for everything.
Andre Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, The Little Book of Philosophy


How can one meditate on live without meditating too on its brevity, its precariousness, its fragility?
Andre Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, The Little Book of Philosophy



Books, Films, Cultural Stuff on these issues? See Meanings Store (in association with Amazon)


COMMENTS - ESSAY
Life is too short; the brevity of life


See also:
The Human Beings
Existential Thought
Life Best Years
Life is Dream
Life is Pain
Death
Science and Meaning
Man and the Universe


Back to Top - Life is too short; the brevity of Life

Back to Home Page - Meanings of life