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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Classical antiquity6 quotes
Men flourish only for a moment. — Homer · 700 BCMankind, fleet of life, like tree leaves, weak creatures of clay, unsubstantial as shadows, wingless, ephemeral, wretched, mortal and dreamlike. — Aristophanes · 424 BCMan, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out. — Heraclitus · 480 BCMark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man-yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it. — Marcus Aurelius · 180Creatures of a day. What is someone? What is no one? Man is the dream of a shadow. But when the brilliance given by Zeus comes, a shining light is on man, and a gentle lifetime. — Pindar · 446 BCMan that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. — Job · 500 BCOld Testament Era5 quotes
As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more. — Psalm 103:15-16 · 450 BCOne generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. — Ecclesiastes 1:4 · 931 BCFor we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding. — David · 430 BCThe days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. — Psalm 90:10 · 450 BCAll our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf. — Isaiah 64:6 · 681 BCNew Testament Era2 quotes
All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away. — 1st Peter 1:24 · 65You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. — James 4:14 · 49Age of Enlightenment1 quote
Individuals pass like shadows; but the commonwealth is fixed and stable. — Edmund Burke · 1780Middle Ages1 quote
The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail ahead; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. — Venerable Bede · 731The Renaissance1 quote
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. — William Shakespeare · 1616