Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 144:4

Man is like to vanity As he that goeth to a fair, with a purse full of money, is devising and debating with himself how to lay it out —possibly thinking that such and such commodities will be most profitable, and bring him in the greatest gain —when on a sudden a cut purse comes and eases him both of his money and care how to dispose of it. Surely you might have taken notice how some of thy neighbours or countrymen, when they have been busy in their contrivances, and big with many plots and projects how to raise their estate and names and families, were arrested by death in a moment, returned to their earth, and in that day all their gay, their great thoughts perished, and came to nothing. The heathen historian could not but observe how Alexander the Great, when he had to carry on his great designs, summoned a parliament before him of the whole world, he was himself summoned by death to appear in the other world. The Dutch, therefore, very wittily to express the world's vanity, picture at Amsterdam a man with a full blown bladder on his shoulders, and another standing by pricking the bladder with a pin, with this motto, quam subito, How soon is all blown down! —George Swinnock.