The world 's a bubble, and the life of man Less then a span:... In his conception wretched, from the womb So to the tomb; Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years With cares and fears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So melts, so vanisheth, so fades, so withers The rose, the shine, the bubble, and the snow... Of praise, pomp, glory, joy (which short life gathers), Fair praise, vain pomp, sweet glory, brittle joy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am dead against art's being self-expression. I see an inherent failure in any story which fails to detach itself from the author...--detach itself in the sense that a well-blown soap-bubble detaches itself from the bowl of the blower's pipe and spherically takes off into the air as a new, whole, pure, iridescent world. Whereas the ill-blown bubble, as children know, timidly adheres to the bowl's lip, then either bursts or sinks flatly back again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What a strange thing is the propagation of life! A bubble of seed which may be spilt in a whore's lap, or in the orgasm of a volup...tuous dream, might (for aught we know) have formed a Caesar or a Buonaparte--there is nothing remarkable recorded of their sires, that I know of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, t...he moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Softly sweet in Lydian measures Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.... 'War', he sung, 'is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble. Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying; If the world be worth thy winning, Think, O think it worth enjoying. Lovely Thais sits beside thee, Take the good the Gods provide thee.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But Shakspeare has no peculiarity, no importunate topic; but all is duly given; no veins, no curiosities: no cow-painter, no bird-...fancier, no mannerist is he: he has no discoverable egotism: the great he tells greatly; the small, subordinately. He is wise without emphasis or assertion; he is strong, as nature is strong, who lifts the land into mountain slopes without effort, and by the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and likes as well to do the one as the other. This makes that equality of power in farce, tragedy, narrative, and love-songs; a merit so incessant, that each reader is incredulous of the perception of other readers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »