Proverbs:
Art is long and life is short
Hippocrates (Aphorisms I. i. ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἑ δε ṯέχνη μακρή, life is short, but art is long) compared the difficulties encountered in learning the art of medicine or healing with the shortness of human life. Hippocrates' saying was alluded to by Seneca in his dialogue ‘On the Brevity of Life’ (De brevitate vitae I: vitam brevem esse, longam artem) and from this version the usual Latin form of the tag is derived: ars longa, vita brevis, art is long, life is short. Art is now commonly understood in the proverb in a less specific sense. In quot. 1958, it refers to (the durability of) a work of art.
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
[c 1380 Chaucer Parliament of Fowls l. 1]
And although oure life be shorte, yet the arte of phisicke is long.
[1558 W. Bullein Government of Health 5V]
An art is long and life is short.
[1581 G. Pettie tr. S. Guazzo's Civil Conversation i. 16]
Art is Long, Life Short. Our Philosophical Meditations on Time are very Obscure and Confus'd.
[1710 S. Palmer Proverbs 380]
If‥we take some other criterion of man's well-being than the cities he has built‥our Liberal friends‥take us up very sharply. ‘Art is long’, says the Times, ‘and life is short.’
[1869 M. Arnold Culture & Anarchy vi.]
The shapely hand on his shoulder still wore the great ring taken from the tomb of a Byzantine youth. Life is short, art long.
[1958 L. Durrell Balthazar iv. xiii.]
‘The art is long,’ Sloan heard himself saying aloud. ‥‘And life is short. I know that.’ Dr. Bressingham completed the quotation brusquely.
[1987 ‘C. Aird’ Dead Liberty viii.]
Related to: life; mortality
Bibliography of major proverb collections and works cited from modern editions is available here.
