Quotes About Ephemeral

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.

Whenever you turn your head, your deaths dodge behind you. Wherever you look, they hide. They hide in a teacup. Or in a dewdrop. Or in a breath of wind.

In some lights they were hardly there at all, just visible as a drifting quality in the light, a rhythmic evanescence, like veils of transparency turning before a mirror.

men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain.

with no more weight than a shadow.

like a little thorn that catches for a moment on a traveler's sleeve, only to pull out when the traveler walks on.

Lives had been spent here—people had loved one another and eaten and drunk and laughed and betrayed and been afraid of death—and not a single fragment of that remained. White stones, black shadows.

we take for lovers or husbands. You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain.

Everyone thinks at some time or other that in a hundred years no one now alive will be on earth - the overwhelming force will sweep the place clean.

Sembrava non capire o, anche in un momento di stanchezza, non ammettere che avere dei limiti non era poi una cosa così vergognosa, e che lui stesso non era una casa di pietra di centosettant'anni, il cui peso gravasse su imperturbabili travi di quercia: che era, insomma, qualcosa di più transitorio e misterioso.

We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die.

Siamo tutti foglie, amico mio. La nostra vita paragonata a quella delle montagne e a quella del mare è niente, qualche battito del cuore e via. Niente di ciò che noi costruiamo dura in eterno.

Nothing lasts forever. Not even the universe. What

He has no idea how beautiful the ordinary becomes once it disappears.

Laughter rarely lasts longer than a few seconds, it's true. But how enjoyable those few seconds are.

People say that time slips through our fingers like sand. What they don't acknowledge is that some of the sand sticks to the skin. These are memories that will remain, memories of the time when there was still time left.

Whatever we shared is gone, because it was destined to be gone from the minute it started.

Happiness is so rarely a part of my vocabulary, because for me it's so fleeting

I had a sense then of how if we truly understood how many of the unimportant things we do will end up outliving us, we'd never be able to go on.

It's like I've landed in the most perfect place in the universe. And then it blows up.

Let's stay on this song, before it turns to something else, before it switches to a commercial. Let me hold on to this the way it was, before I knew anything else.

This is the nice note, I can't help thinking. But just like a sound, as soon as the note hits the air, it begins to fade.

One last song. One last turn. One last street. No matter how hard you try to keep hold of a day, it's going to leave you -Rhiannon

Laughter rarely lasts longer than a few seconds, it's true. But how enjoyable those few seconds are.