Quotes About Vanitas

Even the tiniest things mean something. Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life—a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple—the painter is giving you a secret message. He's telling you that living things don't last—it's all temporary. Death in life. That's why they're called natures mortes. Maybe you don't see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer—there it is.

I have touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;And from that full meridian of my glory,I haste now to my setting: I shall fallLike a bright exhalation in the evening,And no man see me more.

Careers are here and they're gone. No matter how great we think we are, we're nothing but the temples of Ozymandias-we're ruins in the making.

I clearly saw the skeleton underneath all this show of personality what is left of a man and all his pride but bones?

It's so dry when you read it in the papers, but, really, it's mythic.... It's Icarus, it's Faust, it's Eros and vanitas. It's Star Wars!

Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life—a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple—the painter is giving you a secret message. He's telling you that living things don't last—it's all temporary. Death in life. That's why they're called natures mortes. Maybe you don't see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer—there it is