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Ah! what is human life?
How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade,
Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd!
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth;
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone.

— Edward Young Busiris (1719)

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More quotes by Edward Young

The blood will follow where the knife is driven,
The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.

In youth, what disappointments of our own making: in age, what disappointments from the nature of things.

The man that makes a character makes foes.

Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

By night an atheist half believes in God.

Night Thoughts (1743)

All Edward Young quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Young (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.