The quality or state of being short; want of reach or extension; brevity; deficiency; as, the shortness of a journey; the shortness of the days in winter; the shortness of an essay; the shortness of the memory; a shortness of provisions; shortness of breath.
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness. Jean de la Bruyere
Fortune pays you sometimes for the intensity of her favors by the shortness of their duration. She soon tires of carrying any one long on her shoulders. Baltasar Gracian
Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten. Lewis Mumford
The ages two to 15 I spent at different stages of shortness. I didn't become a tall person until I was 16. John Cusack
I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night. Laura Marling
