“Life is a hot day, perhaps death is a cool night. Life is a shallow bay, perhaps death is a clear, deep sea.”

—  Mika Waltari

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Feb. 19, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Life is a hot day, perhaps death is a cool night. Life is a shallow bay, perhaps death is a clear, deep sea." by Mika Waltari?
Mika Waltari photo
Mika Waltari 2
Finnish author 1908–1979

Related quotes

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Life is a torrid day,
Parched with the dust and sun;
And death's the calm cool night,
When the weary day is done.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(17th December 1825) Poetic Fragmants - Fifth Series
The London Literary Gazette, 1825

Charles Kingsley photo

“Clear and cool, clear and cool,
By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Song I, st. 1.
Water Babies http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/wtrbs10h.htm (1863)

Mark W. Clark photo

“A soldier's life in combat is an endless series of decisions that mean success or failure, and perhaps life or death for himself or his comrades.”

Mark W. Clark (1896–1984) American general

Source: Calculated Risk (1950), p. 1
Context: A soldier's life in combat is an endless series of decisions that mean success or failure, and perhaps life or death for himself or his comrades. The rifleman crawling through the rubble of a bombed-out street must decide on the best moment to escape enemy fire as he dodges from one doorway to the next. He must take a chance. The general seeking to break an enemy defense line and destroy his forces must decide just when and how to strike and precisely to what extent he dare weaken one sector of his front in order to mass overpowering strength at the main point of attack. He, too, must take a chance, although, in the stilted phraseology of military communiqués, he calls it a "calculated risk".

Novalis photo
Wallace Stevens photo

“This may be a gross exaggeration of a very simple matter. But perhaps the same is true of many of the more prodigious things of life and death.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet"
The Necessary Angel (1951)
Context: It may be dismissed, on the one hand, as a commonplace aesthetic satisfaction: and, on the other hand, if we say that the idea of God is merely a poetic idea, even if the supreme poetic idea, and that our notions of heaven and hell are merely poetry not so called, even if poetry that involves us vitally, the feeling of deliverance, of a release, of a perfection touched, of a vocation so that all men may know the truth and that the truth may set them free — if we say these things and if we are able to see the poet who achieved God and placed Him in His seat in heaven in all His glory, the poet himself, still in the ecstasy of the poem that completely accomplished its purpose, would have seemed, whether young or old, whether in rags or ceremonial robe, a man who needed what he had created, uttering the hymns of joy that followed his creation. This may be a gross exaggeration of a very simple matter. But perhaps the same is true of many of the more prodigious things of life and death.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
R. A. Lafferty photo

“Death is for a long time. Those of shallow thought say that it is forever. There is, at least, a long night of it.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

On death and the nightly resurrection of the slain on Valhal, Ch. 2
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: Death is for a long time. Those of shallow thought say that it is forever. There is, at least, a long night of it. There is the forgetfulness and the loss of identity. The spirit, even as the body, is unstrung and burst and scattered. One goes down to death, and it leaves a mark on one forever.

Anton Chekhov photo
Algernon Charles Swinburne photo

“Night, the shadow of light,
And Life, the shadow of death.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

Second chorus, lines 1-12.
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)
Context: Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time with a gift of tears,
Grief with a glass that ran,
Pleasure with pain for leaven,
Summer with flowers that fell,
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And Madness risen from hell,
Strength without hands to smite,
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And Life, the shadow of death.

William Empson photo

“Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves;
Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems;
Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Arachne" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 34.
The Complete Poems

Related topics