Bede (673-735)
[speaking as the pagan High Priest Coifi, or another advisor of King Edwin of Northumbria (r. 616-633)]
“Man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing.”
- From Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (and relevant letters), Book 2, chapter 13, translated by Leo Sherley-Pride, R. E. Latham and D. H. Farmer (Penguin Classics, 2003).
