 | Leopold von Orlich - 1845 - 342 pages
...contented, how many dissatisfied! The epitaph in Westminster Abbey involuntarily rose to my mind : " Life is a jest*, and all things show it: I thought so once, but now I know it." The rising sun on the 30th of July was the harbinger of * Would not dream be a more appropriate word... | |
 | British empire - 1847 - 856 pages
...uncomfortable amount of awe and veneration, we have a great deal of genuine love. The worthless couplet — " Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, but now I know it" — the mere expression of a mood of the poet's mind, should never have been placed on the monument,... | |
 | John Spence (jr.), Young physician - England - 1847 - 160 pages
...1553, and died in the year 1598." There again, in memory of Gay, is the following strange couplet : " Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, but now I know it." And here is a record of one Matthew Prior, a poet and diplomatist, who wrote his own epitaph in these... | |
 | American literature - 1847 - 440 pages
...of John Gay and Handel exhibit ! On the former is the epitaph written by himself and for himself : " Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, and now I know it." Before the figure of the other is placed the " Messiah," opened at the passage,... | |
 | 1847 - 796 pages
...with so prelatic a place. The man. too, on whose monument is inscribed his own impious couplet — ' Life is a jest, and all things show it, I thought so once, and now I know it,' has surely no claims to be honoured by a Church which regards all such ideas of... | |
 | James Caughey - Methodist Church - 1847 - 376 pages
...one's feelings are shocked by that foolish epitaph on Gay's slab, written, I believe, by himself: — " Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, and now I know it." But then, even this may excite a train of thought which, though not tending to... | |
 | Languages, Modern - 1900 - 500 pages
...von dem Dichter selbst verfafste, etwas frivol klingende Inschrift nicht fehlen dürfen. Sie lautet: Life is a jest, and all things show it: I thought so once, but now I know it. Obwohl von Gays Dichtungen heutzutage nur noch seine Fabeln lebendig sind, ist doch, der Kuhm seines... | |
 | J. T. Headley - Europe - 1849 - 358 pages
...John Gay and Handel exhibit ! On the former, is the epitaph written by himself, and for himself: — " Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, and now I know it." Before the figure of the other is placed the " Messiah," opened at the passage... | |
 | J. T. Headley - Europe - 1850 - 264 pages
...the monuments of John Gay and Handel exhibit ! On the former, is the epitaph written by himself : " Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, and now I know it." Before the figure of the other is placed the " Messiah," opened at the passage... | |
 | John Holmes Agnew, Walter Hilliard Bidwell, Henry T. Steele - American periodicals - 1851 - 608 pages
...said to have been written by Gay himself, and inscribed on the ledge just above Pope's epitaph : — Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, but now I know it. The epitaph of Nicholas Howe, the dramatist, (also by Pope,) has been much admired for the pathos of... | |
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Life is a jest, and all things show it, I thought so once, but now I know it, with what more you may think proper. 
