When true friends meet in adverse hour,
'Tis like a sunbeam through a shower;
A watery ray an instant seen,
The darkly closing clouds between. [ Scott ]
Before the curing of a strong disease,
Even in the instant of repair and health,
The fit is strongest; evils that take leave.
On their departure most of all show evil. [ William Shakespeare ]
Alas, by what rude fate
Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet.
Then part forever on their courses fleet. [ E. C. Stedman ]
We have but one instant to live, and we have hopes for years. [ Flechier ]
Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Evil is like the nightmare, the instant you bestir yourself it has already ended. [ Jean Paul Richter ]
Mortals, what errors are yours! You have but an instant to live, and that instant is a burden.
A stray volume of real life in the daily packet of the postman. Eternal love and instant payment. [ Douglas Jerrold ]
We are poor, indeed, when we have no half-wishes left us. The heart and the imagination close the shutters the instant they are gone. [ Landor ]
False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade. [ Bovee ]
The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Let's take the instant by the forward top; for we are old, and on our quick'st decrees the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time steals, ere we can effect them. [ William Shakespeare ]
Wit, bright, rapid, and blasting as the lightning, flashes, strikes, and vanishes in an instant; humour, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its object in a genial and abiding light. [ Whipple ]
A friend whom you have been gaining during your whole life, you ought not to be displeased with in a moment. A stone is many years becoming a ruby; take care that you do not destroy it in an instant against another stone. [ Saadi ]
Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant, accommodates itself to the meanest capacities, silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible. [ Addison ]
Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant. [ Hazlitt ]
Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite: and this rare conjunction, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant. [ Chateaubriand ]
The productions of the press, fast as steam can make and carry them, go abroad through all the land, silent as snowflakes, but potent as thunder. It is an additional tongue of steam and lightning, by which a man speaks his first thought, his instant argument or grievance, to millions in a day. [ Chapin ]
It takes twenty years to bring man from the state of embryo, and from that of a mere animal, as he is in his first infancy, to the point when his reason begins to dawn. It has taken thirty centuries to know his structure; it would take eternity to know something of his soul; it takes but an instant to kill him. [ Voltaire ]
It is wonderful indeed to consider how many objects the eye is fitted to take in at once, and successively in an instant, and at the same time to make a judgment of their position, figure, and color. It watches against our dangers, guides our steps, and lets in all the visible objects, whose beauty and variety instruct and delight. [ Steele ]
There is no moment like the present: not only so, but moreover, there is no moment at all, that is, no instant force and energy, but in the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards; they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and skurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence. [ Miss Edgeworth ]