“A hundred years—in this life span on earth
talent and destiny are apt to feud.
You must go through a play of ebb and flow
and watch such things as make you sick at heart.
Is it so strange that losses balance gains?
Blue Heaven's wont to strike a rose from spite.”

—  Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kieu

Opening lines
The Tale of Kiều (1813)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A hundred years—in this life span on earth talent and destiny are apt to feud. You must go through a play of ebb and …" by Nguyễn Du?
Nguyễn Du photo
Nguyễn Du12
Vietnamese poet 1765–1820

Related quotes

Wayne W. Dyer photo

“Heaven on Earth is a choice you
must make, not a place you must find.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Han-shan photo

“Old and sick, more than one hundred years
Face haggard, hair white, I'm happy to still live in the mountains
A cloth covered phantom watching the years flow by
Why envy people with clever ways of living?”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Karen Marie Moning photo

“There’s no point in fighting the tide. It ebbs. It flows. You ride it.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

Anni-Frid Lyngstad photo

“So don't tell me the story of your life
I'd rather watch the movie
Your Hollywood smile is not enough
You're giving me the blues
So when are you going to understand
I'm not the woman to make you a man”

Anni-Frid Lyngstad (1945) Swedish female singer

That's Tough (Non-album single credited to Lyngstad, Hans Fredriksson, and Kirsty MacColl), from Shine (1984)
Lyrics, Shine (1984)

James Frazer photo

“Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance…to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man…The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 3, Sympathetic Magic.

Mitch Albom photo

“There are five people you meet in heaven," the Blue Man suddenly said. "Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Kent Hovind photo

“See, there are things that are pre-Flood, but there is no such thing as "prehistoric." We have history from the first day, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." You can't go before that. So there's no such thing as "prehistoric."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Virginia Woolf photo

“The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room (1922), Ch. 8
Context: The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?

Huey P. Newton photo

“When you deal with a man, deal with his most valuable possession, his life. There's play and there's the deep flow. I like to take things to the deep flow of play, because everything is a game, serious and nonserious at the same time. So play life like it's a game.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

quoted in David Hilliard (2006) Huey: Spirit of the Panther, p. 46

Wallace Stevens photo

“The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Related topics