“Time passeth swift away;
Our life is frail, and we may die to-day.”
Christopher Marlowe Tamburlaine
Mycetes, Act I, scene i, line 68
Tamburlaine (c. 1588)
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Context: Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
“Time passeth swift away;
Our life is frail, and we may die to-day.”
Christopher Marlowe Tamburlaine
Mycetes, Act I, scene i, line 68
Tamburlaine (c. 1588)
Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist
“In these great times,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), p. 74
Chaim Potok book The Chosen
David Malter to his son, Reuven (p. 217)
The Chosen (1967)
Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq
The historical extempore speech at the Reserve Officers' College (1959)
Gareth Morgan book Images of Organization
Source: Images of Organization (1986), p. 213
Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648–1717) French mystic
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 543.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
Corinne’s Chant in the Vicinity of Naples
Translations, From the French