Quotes About Ephemeral

Did he realized nothing would last, that sooner or later every last speck and smidgeon of matter would disapper?

The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long. And the trouble with bad times is, you can't sleep through them.

She was illusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.

Sometimes we found photographs of beautiful young girls, or handsome young men. There were pictures of old men, who looked like apostles, and old ladies with faded smiles. In some, one could see children playing in a park, babies crying, or newlyweds kissing. On the reverse of these were some farewells, oaths, or religious passages scribbled in handwriting obviously shaken by fear or the motion of the train. The words were often washed off by the morning dew or bleached out by the sun.

No, no, we are definitely writ on water. Or cognac -- if we've any luck at all.

everything is temporary if you give it enough time...

The sky, unlike the sea, never holds on to the people that pass through it. The sky contains nothing of our spirit, it doesn't care. Always shifting, altering its aspect from one moment to the next, it can't be defined.

But when I come out of the woods, when I see the basket, scarcely a handful of words remain. The majority disappear. They vanish into thin air, they flow like water between my fingers. Because the basket is memory, and memory betrays me, memory doesn't hold up.

What I do and what I record only work for the moment.

To serve thy generation, this thy fate: "Written in water," swiftly fades thy name; But he who loves his kind does, first and late, A work too late for fame.

The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.

The material of life is made from time

Everything physical is a creation of time

Time is a diminishing factor

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

Substance is enduring, form is ephemeral.

The substance of fictional architecture is not bricks and mortar but evanescent consciousness.

The appeal of perfume is that it is at once ephemeral and empowering. It creates a shimmering invisible armor that lingers in a room long after its wearer has gone and infuses our imagination with a subtle power, hinting at a hidden identity.

What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to a new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom. Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. They stay in our lives for awhile.

True friendship is like a rose. We can't realize it's beauty until it fades.

on short stories: "...something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.

I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.

After the dead words, after the ones still said and spoken, what do you expect? Some flying leaves, more scattered papers. Who knows? Some dissolving words, like the light or the echo dying out there in the great night.