Life is short and art is long…
“Life is short and art is long;” some few are wise, many are foolish; some waste their admiration and others husband their wit. These are the truisms which we are prone to use in the first sour speculations which dawn upon our minds. Each man thinks he hath broached the doctrines of wisdom when the beam of a star which hath shone on all else at last lights on him, and is pleased with himself until time hath taught him that knowledge is common and ideas are old. The child is proud of his toys till he knows that other children play with the same or better; the man is proud of his honours till some rivals equal and others outgo him and a prize yet brighter is presented to his grasp. This is the life of man — one vain progress from imagined happiness to real disappointment and an endless repetition of the same career.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 1:326
