Shortness of Life Quotes

The significance of the cherry blossom tree in Japanese culture goes back hundreds of years. In their country, the cherry blossom represents the fragility and the beauty of life. It's a reminder that life is almost overwhelmingly beautiful but that it is also tragically short.

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

Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.

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.

I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.

I've seen people pass away. I've seen how fragile life is.

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon.

That's the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God - so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true... Hell, don't pose me that one.

Man is born in a day, and he dies in a day, and the thing is easily over; but to have a sick heart for three-fourths of one's lifetime is simply to have death renewed every morning; and life at that price is not worth living.

It's always been intriguing to me, the loveability of mortality.

When we reflect on the shortness and uncertainty of life, how despicable seem all our pursuits of happiness.

Do you know, Valerio, that even the least among all humans is so great that life is far too short to love him?