"Man is but a bubble. The lesson of this proverb is that there is nothing so fragile, so fleeting and so empty as the life of man. A bubble is that round swollen empty thing which we watch in water as it grows and vanishes in a moment of time. Thus Marcus Terentius Varro in the preface to his book on agriculture: 'Bearing in mind', he says, 'that I must make haste; for if, as they say, man is but a bubble, much more is this true of an old man. My eightieth year reminds me to pack my baggage, before I bid farewell to life.' . . . Nor could one think of anything, in fact, which would give a better picture of the utter nothingness of this life of ours."
The Adages of Erasmus (selected by William Barker), II.iii.48 (University of Toronto Press, 2001), pp. 171-172.
Long before encountering the comments by Erasmus, I came across this poem by Robert Dodsley (who is perhaps best known as one of Samuel Johnson's publishers):
Man's a poor deluded bubble,
Wand'ring in a mist of lies,
Seeing false, or seeing double,
Who would trust to such weak eyes?
Yet presuming on his senses,
On he goes most wond'rous wise:
Doubts of truth, believes pretences;
Lost in error, lives and dies.
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