Time is so old and love so brief, love is pure gold and time a thief. We're late, darling, we're late, The curtain descends, everything ends, too soon, too soon.
When I remember bygone days I think how evening follows morn So many I loved were not yet dead, So many I love were not yet born.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the passage of time, highlighting the continuity of love and loss across generations.
Ogden Nash's quote poignantly captures the interplay of memory and time, illustrating how past experiences and relationships influence our present. It underscores the bittersweet nature of love, as we cherish those who have passed while acknowledging that there are many yet to come into our lives. The cyclical nature of life, symbolized by 'evening follows morn', reminds us of the ever-changing landscape of our relationships and the eternal cycle of love across generations.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a memorial speech, reflecting on loved ones who have passed while also celebrating new lives.
More from Ogden Nash
All quotes βI'm like a backward berry, Unripened on the vine, For all my friends are fifty, And I'm only forty-nine.
I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
Here's a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb.
Middle-age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.
Here's a toast to the roast that good fellowship lends, with the sparkle of beer and wine; May its sentiment always be deeper, my friends, than the foam at the top of the stein. Then here's to the heartening wassail, wherever good fellows are found; Be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around.
Similar quotes
I never got the chance to meet Linda Brown; there were several times we were supposed to meet or be on the same stage together, but life gets in the way, and it never happened.
If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery. I have the same violent temper my father and older brother had. Both died of injuries from street fights in Baltimore, fights begun by flare-ups of their tempers.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and in spite of what most people might have expected from a young girl growing up deaf, life for me was like one long episode of The Brady Bunch. Despite whatever barriers were in my way, I imagined myself as Marcia Brady skating down the street saying βhiβ to everyone, whether they knew me or not.
Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, sit down with myself and explain that things were going to be okay, that everybody loses ground sometimes and it doesnβt mean anything. Itβs the way life works. This is hard to understand in the moment. You get to thinking about the girl who rejected you, the job you got fired from, the test you failed, and you lose sight of the big picture β the fact that life has a beautiful way of remaking itself every few weeks.
I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me.
The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not "get over" the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.