Quotes About Transience

The world in which we live is no more real than a moon beam reflected in water drawn from the palm of the hand...

Due to their short bloom time, Sakura blossoms are a metaphor for life itself: beautiful yet fleeting. You'll realize when you're as old as me to hang on to the good times because they won't last forever.

The fulfillment we have in owning, in desiring, is temporary and illusory, because there is nothing at all we can have that we will not lose eventually. And so there is always fear.

Everything is impermanent: happiness, sorrow, a great meal, a powerful empire, what we're feeling, the people around us, ourselves.

Pain is tough, but it's going to leave us. Pleasure is wonderful, but it's going to leave us. You can't hang on to pleasure; you can't stop pain from coming; you can be aware.

All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes.

All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.

We like to think of life as a constant ... Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat.

What small account The All-living seems to take of this thin flame Which we call life. He sends a moment's blast Out of war's nostrils, and a myriad Of these our puny tapers are blown out Forever.

Photography seems to fix, but this is an illusion created by our short lives. A photograph is merely a note held for 200 years.

And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own.

So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre

Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre.

In secret pleasure — secret tears This changeful life has slipped away

In this mortal life, nothing is blessed throughout.

You can live in the world and have friends, family and possessions. But don't take them all too seriously. Death removes everything. Feel death is every moment, as life is every moment.

You don't live forever, at least in this life.

The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.

The medium's gaze is brief, intense, and promiscuous. The shelf life of the moral causes it makes its own is brutally short.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

Life goes quickly, doesn't it?

That's the trouble with living things. Don't last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together.

If things were not impermanent, life would not be possible.

According to the Buddhist belief, you can go on and on indefinitely, so you see your life as just a brief moment in time.