I observe, then, in the first place, that the propriety of this simile is seen in the brevity of life. What more rapid and momentary than a story? It is heard, and passes. Though it beguiles us for the time, it dies away in sound, or melts from before, the eye. And this I say, strikingly illustrates the brevity of life. The brevity of life! It is a trite truth, and yet how little realized! Probably there is nothing, more common, and yet there is nothing, more pernicious, than the habit of virtual dependence upon length of days.英文原著 · 《The Crown of Thorns》
Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrel'd beef: the propagation of swine's flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well grown, fat yearly child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor's feast, or any other publick entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit, being studious of brevity.英文原著 · 《A Modest Proposal》
That was typical of Russell Conwell--to tell with brevity of what he has done, to point out the beginnings of something, and quite omit to elaborate as to the results. And that, when you come to know him, is precisely what he means you to understand--that it is the beginning of anything that is important, and that if a thing is but earnestly begun and set going in the right way it may just as easily develop big results as little results.英文原著 · 《Acres of Diamonds》
Still we visit it, and leave to memory the filling up of what is gone. All things change, and we with them. The following Dial of Life gives a brief summary of my career. It shows the brevity of life, and indicates the tale that is soon told. The first part of the semicircle includes the passage from infancy to boyhood and manhood. While that period lasts, time seems to pass very slowly. We long to be men, and doing men's work. What I have called The Tableland of Life is then reached.英文原著 · 《An Autobiography》
If the result is not Attic in salt, it is at any rate Roman in brevity. I send it forth with John Bunyan's homely aspiration:
And may its buyer have no cause to say, His money is but lost or thrown away.英文原著 · 《Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake》
All worldly things appear most vain and unsatisfying to those who have tried them most. But while I feel that this has had some hand in my distaste for man's praise, yet it is the increasing impression on my heart of man's nothingness and God's transcendent greatness; it is the brevity and vanity of all earthly things, taken along with the nearness of eternity;--it is all this that has at last lifted me above the blame and the praise of men."英文原著 · 《Bunyan Characters-2》