“An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay,
And glides in modest innocence away.”

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 293

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away." by Samuel Johnson?
Samuel Johnson photo
Samuel Johnson 362
English writer 1709–1784

Related quotes

“Ah! Postumus! Devotion fails
The lapse of gliding years to stay,
With wrinkled age it nought avails
Nor conjures conquering Death away.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Book II, ode xiv
Translations, The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace (1863)

Markus Zusak photo

“Things always seem to glide away.
They come to you, stay a moment, then leave again.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: Getting the Girl

James Beattie photo

“Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
Patient of toil, serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms.”

James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher

Book i. Stanza 11.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield photo

“Cheerful with wisdom, with innocence gay,
And calm with your joys gently glide thro' the day.
The dews of the evening most carefully shun —
Those tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

"Advice to a Lady in Autumn", published in A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. I. (1763), printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley

James Russell Lowell photo

“Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

St. 3.
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1169/ (July 21, 1865)

George MacDonald photo

“Age is not all decay; it is the ripening,
the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husks.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

Ai Weiwei photo

“The disaster-makers always get away, while the innocent are always punished.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Our Duty Is to Remember Sichuan, 2009

John Bowring photo

“Chance and change are busy ever;
Man decays, and ages move;
But His mercy waneth never;
God is wisdom, God is love.”

John Bowring (1792–1872) 4th Governor of Hong Kong

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 272.

William Wordsworth photo

Related topics