On The Shortness Of Life Quotes

There will always be causes for anxiety, whether due to prosperity or to wretchedness. Life will be driven on through a succession of preoccupations: we shall always long for leisure, but never enjoy it. ~ Seneca.

There is a correlation between how foolish a man is and how tolerant he is of people who waste his time. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

All distances in time and space are shrinking. […] Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. […] Everything gets lumped together into uniform distanceless. […] What is it that unsettles and thus terrifies? It shows itself and hides itself in the way in which everything presences, namely, in the fact that despite all conquest of distances the nearness of things remains absent. ~ Martin Heidegger

The longness and shortness of the present moment can be recognized by utilizing a big image of the moon, which is reflecting on the surface of the ocean, and a small image of the moon on the surface of a cup of water, or in another example the very wide scale of the whole sky itself, and the very narrow space of the moon, which is shining in the sky. ~ Dogen

Paced Breathing

People who experience anxiety often breathe improperly. They take shallow breaths from their chests instead of deep breaths from their diaphragms. (The diaphragm is the muscle that separates your chest cavity from your abdominal cavity and that makes it possible for you to inhale and exhale.)
Breathing from the chest can cause you to hyperventilate, which has a negative effect on your body's chemistry. Hyperventilation does not only mean panting or gasping for air; it also includes yawning, holding your breath, and sighing. The symptoms of hyperventilation are similar to those associated with anxiety: shortness of breath, lightheadedness, faintness, tingling or numbness in your fingers and toes, and the feeling that you are walking around in a dream. If you deal with anxiety and begin to hyperventilate, it will make the situation even worse. ~ Heather Moehn

Inside his copy of The Social Contract he keeps a letter from a young Picard, an enthusiast called Antoine Saint-Just: "I know you, Robespierre, as I know God, by your works."
When he suffers, as he does increasingly, from a distressing tightness of the chest and shortness of breath, and when his eyes seem too tired to focus on the printed page, the thought of the letter urges the weak flesh to more Works. ~ Hilary Mantel

Sometimes I'm sad about everything; the way my grilled cheese sandwich tastes, how nice my socks feel, a song John is playing in the kitchen. One time he puts on this goofy Loudon Wainwright song that was on a mix tape I used to listen to during my commute from the boys' school in Bethesda back into the District when we were newly married and everything was about to begin and it makes me burst into tears about the shortness of everything. ~ Nina Riggs

Suppose you came across a woman lying on the street with an elephant sitting on her chest. You notice she is short of breath. Shortness of breath can be a symptom of heart problems. In her case, the much more likely cause is the elephant on her chest. For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences. That is the elephant. Until the playing field has veen leveled and lingering stereotypes are gone, you can't even ask the question. ~ Sally Ride

You are really tall for fifteen." His eyes drifted over me, a small smile playing on his lips. "A lot of people must seem tall to you." "Are you calling me short?" "Are you saying you're not short?" I wrinkled my nose. "I'm not delusional. It's just not polite to comment on a girl's shortness. For all you know I'm really mad at the world because I'm vertically challenged."
Young, Samantha (2014-10-07). Echoes of Scotland Street: An On Dublin Street Novel (p. 5). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition. ~ Samantha Young

Jemima was not pretty, the flatness and shortness of her face made her almost plain; yet most people looked twice at her expressive countenance, at the eyes which flamed or melted at every trifle, at the rich colour which came at every expressed emotion into her usually sallow face, at the faultless teeth which made her smile like a sunbeam. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

No one is kept in poverty by a shortness in the supply of riches, there is more than enough for all. ~ Wallace D. Wattles

. . .There is nothing to complain of. . .we had a gorgeous day for the climb, almost windless and brilliantly fine, yet we were unable to get to the summit. So we have no excuse - we have been beaten in fair fight; beaten by the height of the mountain, and by our own shortness of breath. But the fight was worth it, worth it every time, and we shall cherish the privilege of defeat by the world's greatest mountain. ~ Howard Somervell

Will the kindness of this letter excuse the shortness of it? ~ Dorothy Osborne

Of all the ways that God could show up, He showed up by coming down. Therefore, despite the shortness of my reach it is never outside the length of His grasp. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all. ~ Winston Churchill

Today I saw cancer, cigarettes, and shortness of breath. This is why I walk to the ocean. Swim with sharks and jellyfish. I may never get this chance again. This is why if you want to kiss, you should kiss. If you want to cry, you should cry. And if you want to live, you should live. You don't have to love me. You already did. ~ Ryan Ross

A democracy,- that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom. ~ Theodore Parker

Consider the shortness of time, the length of eternity, and reflect how everything here below comes to an end and passes by. Of what use is it to lean upon that which cannot give support? ~ Gerard Majella

Sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing, and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and an intense subjective distress described as tension or mental pain. Tightness in the throat. ~ Joan Didion

Father Mike was popular with the church widows. They liked to crowd around him, offering him cookies and bathing in his beatific essence. Part of this essence came from Father Mike's perfect contentment at being five foot four. His shortness had a charitable aspect to it, as though he had given away his height. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

The ages two to 15 I spent at different stages of shortness. I didn't become a tall person until I was 16. ~ John Cusack

A man of forty today has nothing to worry him but falling hair, inability to button the top button, failing vision, shortness of breath, a tendency of the collar to shut off all breathing, trembling of the kidneys to whatever tune the orchestra is playing, and a general sense of giddiness when the matter of rent is brought up. Forty is Life's Golden Age. ~ Robert Benchley

Wherever there is light, there is shadow; wherever there is length, there is shortness; wherever there is white, there is black. Just like these, as the self-nature of things can not exist alone, they are called non-substantial. ~ Gautama Buddha

I have wept in the night
At my shortness of sight
That to others' needs made me blind,
But I never have yet
Had a twinge of regret
For being a little too kind. ~ C.R. Gibson

As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect - the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth - seemed to be her own special and peculiar form of beauty. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I discovered is that I have a couple of valves that were leaky and had been giving, gave me a problem then. But I hadn't noticed anything up until then.A couple of incidents of shortness of breath and checked myself into a hospital, but that one in France really sat me down for a few minutes - a very few minutes, because seven days later I was in the studio, and eight days later, I was no the stage. ~ Al Jarreau

Isn't it complicated to be human, though?" she said. "Animals seem to give up their lives so naturally…And after all, I grew up, I married John, I had Debby. So knowing, being able to understand and forecast and even predict an approximate date, shouldn't make any difference. I guess consciousness makes individuals of us, and as individuals we lose the old acceptance…"
"The one thing," Marian said in a voice that went suddenly small and tight, "the thing I can hardly bear sometimes is that I won't ever see her grow up. She'll have to do it without whatever I could have given her."
"Time, too, time and everything that one could do in it, and the chance of wasting or losing or never even realizing it. It's so important to us because we see it so close. We're individuals, we're full of ourselves, and so we're bad historians. We get crazy and anxious because all of sudden there's so little time left to be loving and generous as we wish we'd always been and always intended to be…do you suppose I feel the shortness of time because I want to experience everything and feel everything that the race has ever felt? Because there's so much to feel and I'm greedy? ~ Wallace Stegner

Rather than envy, anticipation, or joy, what I feel when I look at the bride is a shortness of breath. I hear the echo of doors closing, as if every one of her life's decisions has just been made. ~ Nicole Hardy

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them. ~ Seneca The Younger

She quite enjoyed the intensity of the stranger's gaze whenever their eyes met, and her sudden shortness of breath was not in the least alarming. ~ Cindy Anstey

No divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys; for the first lesson that terror is sent to teach us is, the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time. ~ John Ruskin

Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
My folks could beg or borrow. ~ Countee Cullen

It is true that we have not deliberately or wholly abandoned the Christian element in our tradition, but does that element count with us as it once did? Is the moral tone of the nation - its politics, its business life, its literature, its theatre, its movies, its radio networks, its television stations - Christian? ~ Robert McCracken

The Earth has recovered after fevers like this, and there are no grounds for thinking that what we are doing will destroy Gaia, but if we continue business as usual, our species may never again enjoy the lush and verdant world we had only a hundred years ago. What is most in danger is civilization; humans are tough enough for breeding pairs to survive, and Gaia is toughest of all. What we are doing weakens her but is unlikely to destroy her. She has survived numerous catastrophes in her three billion years or more of life. ~ James E. Lovelock

You've got to have a focus. You just fight for money, you get hurt. You focus on the title, you'll just naturally make money doing it. ~ George Foreman

I enjoyed learning the poems, but I didn't understand of what use they might possibly be. 'They'll keep you company on the day you have no books to read,' my teacher said. ~ Alberto Manguel

Tom Lehrer line - "Life is like a sewer: What you get out of it depends on what you put into it"112 - and a promise that if they put real effort into the exercises, he will help them. ~ Eric Schmidt

It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer