Travelers, it is late. Life's sun is going to set. During these brief days that you have strength, be quick and spare no effort of your wings.
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no 'brief candle' to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.
Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. But, either it was different in blood,- Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,- Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en: In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the angels weep.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom, If this be error, and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss For everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind delight.
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
If people said what they thought, most conversations would be very brief.
Undoubtedly you have all swallowed the Mary Poppins Myth as peddled in the film, Mary Poppins, but We wish to give YOU the truth. You will all have heard of Adolf Hitler. You may also know that one of the reasons that he came to power was because the German people thought he would protect them from Communism. But there was another, more sinister reason. Yes, the German feared one person more than any other. That one person was: MARY POPPINS. Yes, you may laugh and wonder why this never appeared in your school textbooks, but that is because your Government wants to protect you from the true terror of her brief, but bloody regime. Mary Poppins (MP) swept to power in the 1929 German general election. This was due mostly to her brilliant propaganda. Slogans such as "Freedom, Bread, Land, Feed The Birds" appealed to the desperate population. Once in power, she was brutal. She was the real "Bloody Mary". Together with her elite army of "chimney sweeps" (This was the name given to them prior to her victory to avoid detection), she terrorized millions, poisoning millions with what she called her "medicine". MP was not the only German dictator to harbor dreams of world domination. Her plan to infiltrate London with spies failed due to their appalling fake cockney accents. The true depths of her wickedness still remain hidden, even to us; but we will give you fresh facts as soon as they come to light.
The great thing that strikes you on looking back is how quickly you have come-how very brief is the span of life on this earth. The warning that one would give, therefore, is that it is well not to fritter it away on things that don't count in the end; nor on the other hand is it good to take life too seriously as some seem to do. Make it a happy life while you have it. That is where success is possible to every man.
But sea power has never led to despotism. The nations that have enjoyed sea power even for a brief period-Athens, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, the United States-are those that have preserved freedom for themselves and have given it to others. Of the despotism to which unrestrained military power leads we have plenty of examples from Alexander to Mao.
These clipper ships of the early 1850's were built of wood in shipyards from Rockland in Maine to Baltimore. These architects, like poets who transmute nature's message into song, obeyed what wind and wave had taught them, to create the noblest of all sailing vessels, and the most beautiful creations of man in America. With no extraneous ornament except a figurehead, a bit of carving and a few lines of gold leaf, their one purpose of speed over the great ocean routes was achieved by perfect balance of spars and sails to the curving lines of the smooth black hull; and this harmony of mass, form and color was practiced to the music of dancing waves and of brave winds whistling in the rigging. These were our Gothic cathedrals, our Parthenon; but monuments carved from snow. For a few brief years they flashed their splendor around the world, then disappeared with the finality of the wild pigeon.
If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
It is an experiment worth trying to be alone and to be quiet for a brief period every day. Under city conditions it may be difficult to carry out, but most of us could do it if we tried. At any rate, we should moderate the pace at which we are living. If we remain at high gear, at top pressure, we are bound to suffer from fatigue and strain.
It is not merely the brevity by which the haiku isolates a particular group of phenomena from all the rest; nor its suggestiveness, through which it reveals a whole world of experience. It is not only in its remarkable use of the season word, by which it gives us a feeling of a quarter of the year; nor its faint all-pervading humour. Its peculiar quality is its self-effacing, self-annihilative nature, by which it enables us, more than any other form of literature, to grasp the thing-in-itself.
Our faith comes in moments . . . yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
Two lights for guidance. The first, our little glowing atom of community, with all that it signifies. The second, the cold light of the stars, symbol of the hypercosmical reality, with its crystal ecstasy. Strange that in this light, in which even the dearest love is frostily asserted, and even the possible defeat of our half-waking world is contemplated without remission of praise, the human crisis does not lose but gains significance. Strange, that it seems more, not less, urgent to play some part in this struggle, this brief effort of animacules striving to win for their race some increase of lucidity before the ultimate darkness.
Those who believe for a while make only a brief tour in the kingdom, though thereafter they often feel qualified to inform those who know even less about the Church; but the fact is they were really only tourists - not natives who really knew the kingdom's countryside.
Crouchers move through a garden at a stoop: naming, gasping, horraying, admiring or coveting plants; Gapers saunter, smiling or sighing at what they find, succumbing to an intangible beatitude that takes them for a brief escape into another dimension. Both sorts of gardener are besotted; both get their hands dirty; think and talk gardening; but on the threshold of another's garden, each use a different set of whiskers.
Life is often compared to a marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity to perform at our best.
Ere you lie down to sleep in the night, sit still awhile, and nurse again to life your gentler self. Forget the restless, noisy spirit of the day, and encourage to speech the soft voices within you that timidly whisper of the peace of the quiet night; and occasionally look out at the quiet stars. The night will soothe you like a tender mother, folding you against her soft bosom, and hiding you from the harm of the world. Though denied and rejected by men in the light of day, the night will not reject you and in the still of her soft shadows you are free. After the day's struggle there is no freedom like unfettered thoughts, no sound like the music of silence. And though behind you lies a road of dust and heat and discouragement, and before you the challenge and uncertainty of untried paths, in this brief hour you are master of all highways, and the universe nestles in your soul.
