
“Struggling to be brief I become obscure.”
Brevis esse laboro,
obscurus fio.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 25
Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 52.
“Struggling to be brief I become obscure.”
Brevis esse laboro,
obscurus fio.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 25
“The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood; the pain is brief, the joy unending.”
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Books and Reading
An Old Man http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=39&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)
Context: He knows he’s aged a lot: he sees it, feels it.
Yet it seems he was young just yesterday.
So brief an interval, so very brief. And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him,
how he always believed — what madness —
that cheat who said: “Tomorrow. You have plenty of time.”
“The fashions of human affairs are brief and changeable, and fortune never remains long indulgent.”
Breves et mutabiles vices rerum sunt, et fortuna nunquam simpliciter indulget.
IV, 14, 20.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book IV
“For a brief time I was here; and for a brief time I mattered.”
His entire afterword to The Essential Ellison (1987)
Also quoted in the death announcement made by his publicist (28 June 2018).
Four-Word Letter, Pt 2.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Context: Art is the great and universal refreshment. For Art is never dogmatic; holds no brief for itself; you may take it, or you may leave it. It does not force itself rudely where it is not wanted. It is reverent to all tempers, to all points of view. But it is wilful — the very wind in the comings and goings of its influence, an uncapturable fugitive, visiting our hearts at vagrant, sweet moments; since we often stand even before the greatest works of Art without being able quite to lose ourselves! That restful oblivion comes, we never quite know when — and it is gone! But when it comes, it is a spirit hovering with cool wings, blessing us from least to greatest, according to our powers; a spirit deathless and varied as human life itself.