The hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood
On dusty shelves, when held against the ear
Proclaims its stormy parent, and we hear
The faint, far murmur of the breaking flood.
We hear the sea.The Sea? It is the blood
In our own veins, impetuous and near.
My feet are heavy now but on I go,
My head erect beneath the tragic years.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead;
They followed still his crooked way
And lost a hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy years a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
Oh would I were a boy again,
When life seemed formed of sunny years,
And all the heart then knew of pain
Was wept away in transient tears!
Thou hast wounded the spirit that loved thee
And cherish'd thine image for years;
Thou hast taught me at last to forget thee,
In secret, in silence, and tears.
Not by years but by disposition is wisdom acquired.
Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.
For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.
Epimenides was sent by his father into the field to look for a sheep, turned out of the road at mid-day and lay down in a certain cave and fell asleep, and slept there fifty-seven years; and after that, when awake, he went on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short nap.
On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a wine-cooler, and said that it was sixteen years old. "It is very small for its age," said Gnathæna.
Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours
Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours.
I 'm growing old, I'm sixty years;
I 've labored all my life in vain.
In all that time of hopes and fears,
I 've failed my dearest wish to gain.
I see full well that here below
Bliss unalloyed there is for none
My prayer would else fulfilment know--
Never have I seen Carcassonne!
A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
We spend our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.
The important thing is to get yourself born. Youâre entitled to that. But youâre not entitled to life. Because if you were entitled to life, then the life would have to be quantified. How many years? Seventy? Sixty? Shakespeare was dead at fifty-two. Keats was dead at twenty-six. Thomas Chatterton at seventeen.
For the day may come, some thousand years hence, when even the works of Ben Jonson will be read little, but the bright eyes of Ben Jonson will flash out here and there in a breathtaking felicity of phrase from the green Eden of God's own book that may never die.
This musing and this fear's work of your maiden years. Why shut longer your ears?
Some day, all marriages had to become sexless, but then they usually had more than fifteen years to look back on.
When a man's father is alive, look at the bent of his will. When his father is dead, look at his conduct. If for three years [of mourning] he does not change from the way of his father, he may be called filial.