Turning down an offer of payment from Irénée du Pont in 1954 for a second mural after one he had finished in 1933 began to deteriorate because of improperly dried paint; as quoted in "How Maxfield Parrish Fulfilled a Warranty" by Seth W. Mattingly in Valley News [Lebanon, NH] (10 February 1982), p.2.
“Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”
“Fear lasted a week, anger a year and resentment a lifetime.”
Source: Culture series, Matter (2008), Chapter 17 “Departures” (p. 305)
Context: On this purely practical issue he judged massacre wasteful and even contrary as a method of control.
“One should work to his last breath. Idleness should always be avoided.”
Karma yoga
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 25 December 1981
“Motivation gets you through the day, but inspiration lasts a lifetime.”
“Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”
“Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.”
Attributed to Clarke on the internet, this has also been attributed to Isaac Asimov in published works.
Disputed
The Times, 10 December 1934.
Explaining his decision to personally begin the dismantling of the old Waterloo Bridge; the government had refused to allow the council to build a replacement so Morrison and his allies forced the issue by breaking up the existing bridge.
Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)
Context: Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion. My great predecessor, William Faulkner, speaking here, referred to it as a tragedy of universal fear so long sustained that there were no longer problems of the spirit, so that only the human heart in conflict with itself seemed worth writing about.
Faulkner, more than most men, was aware of human strength as well as of human weakness. He knew that the understanding and the resolution of fear are a large part of the writer's reason for being.
This is not new. The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.
“Every man's last day is fixed.
Lifetimes are brief and not to be regained,
For all mankind. But by their deeds to make
Their fame last: that is labor for the brave.”
Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
Omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
Hoc virtutis opus.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book X, Lines 467–469 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald)
