All flesh is grass

All flesh is grass is a much-quoted phrase from the Old Testament, Isaiah 40:6 (Hebrew: כָּל־הַבָּשָׂ֣ר חָצִ֔יר‎ kol basar chatsir). In the New Testament the phrase reoccurs in the First Epistle of Peter (see 1Peter 1:24; Greek: πᾶσα σὰρξ ὡς χόρτος, pasa sarx hōs chortos). In both cases the phrase is interpreted to mean that human life is transitory. It has been used in various works, including:

• "All Flesh is Grass", a poem by English poet Christina Rossetti
• "War Photographer" by the Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, where it describes the sights seen in war photographs
• "The Omnivore's Dilemma", a nonfiction book by Michael Pollan
• it is repeated in a line of the poem "Difficulties of a Statesman" by T. S. Eliot
• All Flesh is Grass, a novel by American science fiction writer Clifford D. Simak
• a book on agriculture by American author Gene Logsdon
• an album by Norwegian dark metal band Madder Mortem
• it was inscribed on the pope's chest in the painting King Edward VI and the Pope
• it was inscribed on the pope's chest in the painting Deathbed of Henry VIII
• cited by Thomas Dekker in The Shoemakers' Holiday ( 1599 )
• it was used as text for "Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras", the second movement of the German Requiem by Johannes Brahms
• it was used in the first stanza of Kipling's poem entitled "Arithmetic on the Frontier"
• it was used in the third stanza of the ninth poem in "Ten Songs" by W. H. Auden to reinforce the idea of "Tempus Fugit" used earlier in the stanza.
• it was used in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, "All flesh is weak. All flesh is grass, I corrected her in my head," (45).
• in the Michael Cimino film, Heaven's Gate (1980), John Hurt's character Billy Irvine mutters it to himself as, appalled, he drunkenly watches a battle unfold around him and is then killed.