The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Robert Burns2 quotes
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed,
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white - then melts for ever. — Robert Burns · 1791Beauty's of a fading nature,
Has a season, and is gone! — Robert Burns · 1764William Shakespeare2 quotes
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date. — William Shakespeare · 1609Everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment. — William Shakespeare · 1609Edmund Bolton1 quote
The withered primrose by the mourning river,
The faded summer’s sun from weeping fountains,
The light-blown bubble vanished for ever,
The molten snow upon the naked mountains,
Are emblems that the treasures we up-lay
Soon wither, vanish, fade, and melt away. — Edmund Bolton · 1600Langston Hughes1 quote
For poems are like rainbows: they escape you quickly. — Langston Hughes · 1940Nagarjuna1 quote
Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud.
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream. — Nagarjuna · 180Robert Graves1 quote
Take your delight in momentariness,
Walk between dark and dark-a shining space
With the grave’s narrowness, though not its peace. — Robert Graves · 1929W.B. Yeats1 quote
Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
Love's pleasure drives his love away,
The painter's brush consumes his dreams. — W.B. Yeats · 1928William Cullen Bryant1 quote
Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower. — William Cullen Bryant · 1828