Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

Mortality has its compensations: one is that all evils are transitory, another that better times may come.

Our life's a moment and less than a moment, but even this mite nature has mockingly humored with some appearance of a longer span.

We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan.

What fools men are to weep the dead and gone! Unwept, youth drops its petals one by one.

I've made a long voyage and been to a strange country, and I've seen the dark man very close; and I don't think I was too much afraid of him, but so much of mortality still clings to me-I wanted most desperately to live and still do.