Alack our life, so beautiful to see, With how much ease life losest, in a day, What many years with pain and toil amassed!
PetrarchNothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness.
PetrarchEach famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.
Petrarch