CURATED COLLECTION

The Shortness of Life

Life is not short — we just spend an astonishing amount of it on the wrong things.

50 quotes found

“
Life is a chronic illness with short periods of remission.

—Armonía SomersNovelist

Post-War ERA • Latin America

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The world is an illusion. We are but a dream, and life is a fleeting shadow.

—Sholem AleichemAuthor

Early Modern ERA • Eastern Europe

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A person can be born twice: the second time when you realize you only have one life.

—Gabriel García MárquezNovelist

Post-War ERA • Latin America

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The heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfilment.

—Milan KunderaNovelist

Late Modern ERA • Eastern Europe

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Every life, however brief, has a story to tell.

—Jhumpa LahiriAuthor

Contemporary ERA • South Asia

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Life is but a dream, and joy a fleeting moment.

—Li BaiPoet

Medieval ERA • East Asia

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Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.

—Omar KhayyamMathematician, Astronomer & Poet

Medieval ERA • Central Asia

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It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.

—SenecaPhilosopher, Statesman & Playwright

Ancient World ERA • Southern Europe

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Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary OliverPoet

Late Modern ERA • North America

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The life you seek you will not find. When gods created man, they allotted death.

—Sin-leqi-unninniScholar

Ancient World ERA • MENA

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We are all dogeaters, consuming and consumed, in the grand, absurd carnival of life.

—Jessica HagedornNovelist, Poet & Artist

Late Modern ERA • Southeast Asia

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Life, like a hummingbird, suspended in the instant, vibrating without knowing why.

—Julio CortázarNovelist & Writer

Post-War ERA • Latin America

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Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.

—Arthur SchopenhauerPhilosopher

Industrial Age ERA • Western Europe

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We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

—William ShakespearePlaywright & Poet

Renaissance ERA • Western Europe

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Any life, however long and complicated it may be, is made up of a single moment.

—Jorge Luis BorgesWriter & Essayist

Early Modern ERA • Latin America

“
Life is a railway station, where one gets off for a while, then goes on.

—Marina TsvetaevaPoet

Early Modern ERA • Eastern Europe

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Thousands of desires like these, that for each desire, life fades away.

—Mirza GhalibPoet

Industrial Age ERA • South Asia

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The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

—Ursula K. Le GuinAuthor

Post-War ERA • North America

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Man's life is a day. What is he? What is he not? A dream of a shadow.

—PindarLyric Poet

Ancient World ERA • Southern Europe

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When life passed in such a state, Ghalib, / What remembrance will we keep of having God?

—Mirza GhalibPoet

Industrial Age ERA • South Asia

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