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So little time we live in Time,_x000D_ _x000D_ And we learn all so painfully,_x000D_ _x000D_ That we may spare this hour's term_x000D_ _x000D_ To practice for Eternity.
Robert Penn Warren
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Life is short, and we learn through difficult experiences in order to prepare for a greater existence beyond this life.

This quote reflects on the brevity of human life and the often painful lessons we encounter throughout our existence. It emphasizes the importance of using our limited time effectively, suggesting that the struggles we face serve a purpose in preparing us for a more eternal and significant state of being beyond our mortal existence.

Themes

TimeLifeEternityLearningPainPurpose

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the importance of life lessons, one might quote, 'So little time we live in time...' to stress the urgency of learning and growth.

More from Robert Penn Warren

...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.
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The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.
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And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.
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Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selflessness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?
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For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
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Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure.
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Quote by Robert Penn Warren | QuoteProject