“But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.”
"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)
Context: The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.
They prowl the aromatic hill,
And mate as fiercely as they kill,
To roam, to live, to drink their fill;
But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.
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Vita Sackville-West 39
English writer and gardener 1892–1962Related quotes

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 308.

“A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.”
Source: Imajica

Of Natural Fools.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

"Bedouin Song" (1853), in The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (1907), p. 69.
Source: The Poems of Bayard Taylor
Context: I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
Context: From the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!

“284. A Man knows his Companion in a long Journey and a little Inn.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)