Quotes About Transience

By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone. . . But I will bend the light, pretend that it somehow lingered on

I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time--the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back.

Everything at this moment is so sublime that Jake thinks, Freeze! I want to stay right here forever. But of course, life doesn't work that way. The waves fold over themselves again and again and again, and nothing can stop them.

whatever happens on earth is only a transitory dream picture projected in time and space by ourselves. We only need to take it seriously in so far as it adds to our experience.

Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.

Perfect moments don't turn into half-hours.

Flowers live, they are perfect and they affect us; they are God's glory, they make us know why we are alive and human, that we behold. They are beautiful, and then they die and rot and go back to the earth that gave birth to them.

So it is with all beauty," she said cheerfully. "Every glory also shits.

You commit yourself completely to something and then you take your eyes off it for an instant and it's gone. Like it never was. Like you can't even see the evidence of the thing that was there, that you trusted your weight, your honor, your life, your heart to. I've seen some shit, let me tell you.

Some things he had never managed to become jaded to, and the tenuous beauty of the world was one of those.

You commit yourself completely to something and then you take your eyes off it for an instant and it's gone. Like it never was. Like you can't even see the evidence of the thing that was there, that you trusted your weight, your honor, your life, your heart to.

The white hound who runs before them is gone, vanished, tattered and blown apart by the freshening breeze as if he had no more substance than a twist of smoke.

Anything we have, we are only borrowing. Anything. Any time.

—Yesterday brought to today so lightly!(A yesterday I find almost impossible to lift.)

He snuggled her up against his chest, let his warmth surround her. "This is my favorite time of day. Just before the sun starts to rise. Before there is any hint of daylight. The stars always seem their brightest now, as if they know they only have another hour or so of life. For in that time they'll all be gone from sight, lost to the sun, and hidden away until night claims the world anew. So they shine their brightest while the world still sleeps.

Each golden day was cherished to the full, for one had the feeling that each must be the last. Tomorrow it would be winter.

Four houndred billion suns spiraling through space together. Our solar system just one grain on that galactic carousel. The carousel itself a speck in the cosmos. And here I am in this small clearing, on the surface of the heart, as transient and unnoticed to the universe as the dry blades of grass that are poking into my shirt. It's too much to comprehend up there, too enormous, and I'm so small when it's on top of me. It frightens me, like I'm being crushed.

The bridge was geologically ancient, an impassive observer, surrounded by life that was fleeting in comparison: trees that would only survive hundreds of years, tourists who would only live decades, insects that would thrive only for weeks.

eventually, everything goes away.

She knew that pleasure, to be pleasure, must come to an end.

While you are living, part of you has slipped away to the cemetery.

Before we know it, its all going to be over so fast. Too fast for us to even realize what was..

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She took long showers every night, swimming in the water rushing over her and washing her hair till it squeaked when she ran her hands down it, parents sighing why do you have to be so clean? It was like she knew, in a way. Like that water was grace and soon she would not be able to find it. Soon nothing would make her more than what she was. Nothing would make her whole.

Nature, perpetual whore, distracts with the immediate.