“Life is hell, but at least there are prizes. Or so one thought.”

Source: The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Janet Frame8

New Zealand author 1924–2004

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“Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain — This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.”

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Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
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The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
FitzGerald's first edition (1859).
The Rubaiyat (1120)

“Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize.”

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Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

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A vida...é uma enorme loteria; os prêmios são poucos, os malogrados inúmeros, e com os suspiros de uma geração é que se amassam as esperanças de outra. Isto é a vida.
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“Because not wanting the prize the gods have arranged for you - that just might offend the hell right out of them.”

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Source: The King of Attolia

“Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.”

Henry Clay (1777–1852) American politician from Kentucky

Reported in The Clay Code, or Text-Book of Eloquence, a Collection of Axioms, Apothegms, Sentiments … Gathered from the Public Speeches of Henry Clay, ed. G. Vandenhoff (1844), p. 93.