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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.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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