Quotes About Ephemeral

When the rich give a party and the meal is finished, a man carries round amongst the guests a wooden image of a corpse in a coffin, carved and painted to look as much like the real thing as possible, and anything from 18 inches to 3 foot long; he shows it to each guest in turn, and says: "Look upon this body as you drink and enjoy yourself; for you will be just like it when you are dead." [Herodotus 'Histories', II 82]

Transient guests are we.

We humans make all that present which is never there, and which is always hurrying past us like the tumble of a stream, an all-important thing.

How slow the shadow creeps: but when 'tis pastHow fast the shadows fall. How fast! How fast!

occurs to him that when he is dead, other people will be getting on with their day;

If Henry is the mirror, he is the pale actor who sheds no lustre of his own, but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves he is gone.

The moment is fleeting. But insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.

Life is brief, art is long.

Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone.

What is more useless than the popular novel that has passed its boom!

That's what mortal means," I say with a sigh that I don't have to fake. "We die. Think of us like shooting stars, brief but bright.

We die. Think of us like shooting stars, brief but bright.

You come from nothing, and it is to nothing you will return,¨ he whispers against my neck. ( judes dream ) Page 48

We walk, fading stars overhead, brine in the air.

They streak past me in to the hall in a blast of gossamer.

It'll rot,' I say. 'And so will we.

Como estrellas fugases. Hermosos, brillantes, pero efímeros.

You are mortal. You will not last long.' ... 'That's what mortal means,' I say with a sigh that I don't have to fake. 'We die. Think of us like shooting stars, brief but bright.

Men flourish only for a moment.

Thus she spoke; and I longed to embrace my dead mother's ghost. Thrice I tried to clasp her image, and thrice it slipped through my hands, like a shadow, like a dream.

Words like winter snowflakes.

Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.

Every reputation founded upon the fashion or the fancy of the hour, or upon the short-lived follies of Paris, produces its Pons. No place in the world is so inexorable in great things; no city of the globe so disdainfully indulgent in small.