This was an old saying of mountaineers of the Caucasus which Kennan quoted in a 1921 letter to Henry Munroe Rogers, as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 16th Edition, and in Mental Disorders In The Social Environment : Critical Perspectives (2005) by Stuart A. Kirk, p. 31
Misattributed
“Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.”
W.B. Yeats book The Tower
II, st. 2 <br class="br">The Tower (1928), Two Songs From a Play http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1741/ <br class="br">Context: Everything that man esteems<br>Endures a moment or a day.<br>Love’s pleasure drives his love away,<br>The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.
“Goodness can endure a few moments; holiness is life-defining.”
Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist
The Crisis No. IV.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)
Context: Men who are sincere in defending their freedom, will always feel concern at every circumstance which seems to make against them; it is the natural and honest consequence of all affectionate attachments, and the want of it is a vice. But the dejection lasts only for a moment; they soon rise out of it with additional vigor; the glow of hope, courage and fortitude, will, in a little time, supply the place of every inferior passion, and kindle the whole heart into heroism.
“Time is liquid. One moment is no more important than any other and all moments quickly run away.”
Kurt Vonnegut book Bluebeard
Source: Bluebeard (1987), p. 82
Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself
"Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.
Source: Advertisements for Myself
