“Life can seem short or life can seem long, depending on how you live it.”
Source: The Devil and Miss Prym
“Life is short, but its ills make it seem long.”
Maxim 124
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
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Publilio Siro 112
Latin writerRelated quotes
“Art is long, life is short.”
Ars longa, vita brevis.
Horace
(-65–-8 BC) Roman lyric poet
Seneca's (De Brevitate Vitae, 1.1) Latin translation of the Greek by Hippocrates.
Misattributed
“Life is short, but the years are long.”
Part of the secret "call and response" codewords by which members of the long-lived Howard Families can identify others:
: Life is short.
But the years are long.
Not while the evil days come not.
Methuselah's Children (1958)
“A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.”
André Maurois
(1885–1967) French writer
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”
Henry David Thoreau
(1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Letter to Harrison Blake (16 November 1857)
Context: Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, — returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it. Give this good reason to yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind is ever going over a mountain. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you try, but at 'em again, especially when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
“Art indeed is long, but life is short.”
Andrew Marvell
(1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician
Upon the Death of Lord Hastings (1649), last line
Variant: "Art is long, and time is fleeting." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life (1839).
“Life is too short, and Proust is too long.”
Anatole France
(1844–1924) French writer
Apparently an invention by Maurice Sachs; see discussion in Quotes about Proust.
Misattributed
“Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.”
William Empson
(1906–1984) English literary critic and poet
"Legal Fiction" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 37.
The Complete Poems
