Life is short; art is long

Cultural  

1. Good work takes a long time to accomplish. The earliest version of this famous saying that we know of is by the great Greek medical doctor Hippocrates. It was repeated by many artists and writers including Seneca, Geoffrey Chaucer, Goethe, Longfellow, and Browning.

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Example Sentences

Sidney Blumenthal, a political historian and former assistant and senior adviser to Clinton, said: “I am afraid I have not wasted my limited time on Earth on Newt Gingrich’s oeuvre. Life is short, art is long, Gingrich doesn’t fit.”

From The Guardian

Life is short, art is long … Bulgakov didn’t have children, his children are his books.

From The Guardian

It is a quiet but emphatic metaphor: life is short, art is long, the work outstays the worker.

From New York Times

Examples: A maxim of Hippocrates, in Old English lettering, hangs beside the desk of Dr. Roscoe Roy Spencer in Bethesda, Md.: Life is short, Art is long The occasion instant Experiment perilous Decision difficult.

From Time Magazine Archive

The first aphorism, perhaps the best known of all, which serves as a kind of introduction to the book, runs as follows:—“Life is short, art is long, opportunity fugitive, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult: it is necessary not only to do oneself what is right, but also to be seconded by the patient, by those who attend him, by external circumstances.”

From Project Gutenberg