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.”
“He doesn't know it yet, but the infinity of childhood is brief.”
Source: The Elementary Particles
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Michel Houellebecq 24
writer 1956Related quotes
“The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood; the pain is brief, the joy unending.”
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Books and Reading
“I like it when interviews are brief. Are we done yet?”
What I've Learned
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Context: How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving....
1915 - 1940
Source: a letter to art-seller in New York Pierre Matisse, [son of Henri Matisse, 19 February 1936]; the Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York MA 5020
1900s, A Free Man's Worship (1903)