“How fading are the joys we dote upon!
Like apparitions seen and gone.
But those which soonest take their flight
Are the most exquisite and strong,—
Like angels’ visits, short and bright;
Mortality ’s too weak to bear them long.”

— John Norris

The Parting. Compare: "Like those of angels, short and far between", Robert Blair, The Grave, line 588.; "Like angel visits, few and far between", Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope, part ii. line 378.

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John Norris 2

English theologian, philosopher and poet 1657–1711

Robert Blair The Grave

Part II, line 586. Compare: "Like angels’ visits, short and bright", John Norris, The Parting.
The Grave (1743)

“Our poor friend Sisley, alas! will not assist at the final triumph, which is near, and of which he has seen but the dawning : he is gone too soon, and just at the moment when, in reparation for long injustice, full homage is about to be rendered those strong and charming qualities which make him a painter exquisite and original among them all, a magician of light, a poet of the heavens, of the waters, of the trees — in a word, one of the most remarkable landscapists of this day.”

Adolphe Tavernier (1853–1945) French writer, art critic, collector and journalist

As quoted in Burnley Bibb, The Work of Alfred Sisley, The Studio, December 1899,

“The future is always bright. But it doesn't seem like we can take advantage of it with that kind of weak mindset.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“There 's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanzas for Music (March 1815), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
To temper man: we had been brutes without you.
Angels are painted fair, to look like you:
There ’s in you all that we believe of heaven,—
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love.”

Thomas Otway Venice Preserv'd

Venice Preserv'd (1682), Act i. Sc. 1.

“My spirit is too weak — mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

"On Seeing the Elgin Marbles" (1817)
Context: My spirit is too weak — mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.