“For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?”
Desiderius Erasmus book The Praise of Folly
The Praise of Folly (1511)
Source: Tuesdays with Morrie
“For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?”
Desiderius Erasmus book The Praise of Folly
The Praise of Folly (1511)
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Context: This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet.
Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted
Haunted (2005)
Variant: I used to think the secret to a happy ending was to bring down the curtain at the exact right time. A moment after happiness, then everything's all wrong, again.
Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright
Mesiras Nefesh, quoted in M. Samuel. Prince of the Ghetto. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, p. 22.
“Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene”
Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) English composer of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo
Quoted in The Musical Times, February 1909; cited from Percy A. Scholes The Mirror of Music, 1844-1944 (London: Novello, 1947) vol. 1, p. 267.
Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 15.
Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World
Source: NOS4A2
David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger
Five Years
Song lyrics, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)