Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 87.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,

Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures.

War, he sung, is toil and trouble;

Honour but an empty bubble;

Never ending, still beginning,

Fighting still, and still destroying.

If all the world be worth the winning,

Think, oh think it worth enjoying:

Lovely Thais sits beside thee,

Take the good the gods provide thee.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Alexander's Feast. Line 97.

Like the dew on the mountain,

Like the foam on the river,

Like the bubble on the fountain,

Thou art gone, and forever!

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lady of the Lake. Canto iii. Stanza 16.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard;

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 7.

Whose life is a bubble, and in length a span.

William Browne (1590-1645): Britannia's Pastorals. Book i. Song 2.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man

Less than a span.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The World.