
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Part 1, Ch. 13
Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“How short our happy days appear!
How long the sorrowful!”
"The Mariner's Cave", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“This was the evening of the last day of Gordon Way's life”
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
Context: This was the evening of the last day of Gordon Way's life … The weather forecast hadn't mentioned that, of course, that wasn't the job of the weather forecast, but then his horoscope had been pretty misleading as well. It had mentioned an unusual amount of planetary activity in his sign and had urged him to differentiate between what he thought he wanted and what he actually needed, and suggested that he should tackle emotional or work problems with determination and complete honesty, but had inexplicably failed to mention that he would be dead before the day was out.
“Be the day never so long,
Evermore at last they ring to evensong.”
Part II, chapter 7.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Jiang Yi-huah (2013) cited in " Amid massive anti-nuclear protests, Taiwanese rethink their desired lifestyle http://www.taiwaninsights.com/tag/premier-jiang-yi-huah/" on Taiwan Insights, 14 April 2013
“Shall I be gone long?
For ever and a day
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say
Ask my song.”
Is it far to go? (1963)
“The last thing a monster wanted was a fellow to follow him around all day long with a mirror.”
Vorkosigan Saga, Memory (1996)
What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)
Context: Most years I owe no money and I have no money. Every university pays my way to the next town. That’s about all. No poet has ever made any money out of having his poetry published, and no poet ever will. If the fee is two hundred dollars, it is one hundred dollars for coming to town and one hundred for leaving inside of twenty-four hours. There has been no poetry in the history of the world that has made money for the poet. The New Poetry Movement began when Abel made a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain; but the sacrifice of Abel was not intended as a money-making idea. On the last great day, when Gabriel blows his trumpet, even if he blows it in sonnets, he will not do it for the money that is in it. If he does do it for the cash he will not be Gabriel and it will not be the last great day. It will be a second-rate Hollywood movie of the last great day, and business will continue as usual.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/12/us/girl-7-seeking-us-flight-record-dies-in-crash.html