Quotes About Transience

The paper burns, but the words fly away.

For at the very moment you have Now, it flees. It is gone. It is, on the instant, Then. Surely.

The daguerreotype reproduces what appeared before a lens at a particular moment and never again-its appearance is simultaneous with its disappearance, its death.

Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal, for the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever….

It was created to endure for a specific moment in time. Like a sandcastle, or an ice sculpture. Here, and then gone. In a way, that's the beauty of it. Who'd marvel at a sandcastle, if sandcastles lasted forever?

I've only been on this planet for ten minutes,' I said. 'Already I feel like I've overstayed my welcome.' Purslane looked at me with icy forbearance. 'Work really hard, and maybe next time you can get it down to five.

Time is running out to permeate the piece.

When I was younger I wanted to be an airline pilot, but that lasted for about 30 seconds.

I've been on pilots. I've seen shows come and go. I know that this stuff is all very fleeting, so I try to keep it cool.

Modernity means overabundance. We are living in the age of mass-produced objects, things that come without announcing themselves and end up on our tables, on our walls. We use them - most of us don't even notice them - and then they vanish without fanfare.

I'd get a train to some town and wander about to find a decent spot. Sometimes I'd play for three hours; sometimes I'd get moved on after three songs.

My desk is more of a place where I set my stuff, and then I move around. If I'm at the office, I'm usually wandering around to different meeting rooms all day or taking people out or making tea. I'm rarely at my desk; it's just a place to hang my hat.

That's the beauty about beauty; it's not like a tattoo. You can just wash it right off, and your skin is your canvas, so you can do something new the next day.

Certain women were best viewed from the window of a speeding car, the exaggeration of their makeup and their tight clothes. Maybe women were meant to speed past, just a blur. Like China girls. Flash, and then gone.

Maybe we are all Beths, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together. p 251

Letter [December to Persephone] Am I the only one to notice the soft layer of haze above snow? You say you see butterflies in the skeleton pelvis, well, what about the larger hand of the clock? Or a cauldron for boiling water? Did you, do you ever stop falling?" I repeat your name a word it almost means nothing Do you remember encyclopedias? I piled up the books so you could reach the table. Now the only way to recall you is the shape of your walking away.

this thing seems more dreadful than anything else that has ever happened, more utterly dreadful — but you'll find that it will pass and be completely forgotten —

Carried by light, images remain while sensation is so evanescent as to be always beyond belief.

The fear that all this will end." "The fear that it won't.

Butterflies are symbols of hope. They land beside us, like sunbeams, and belong to us for a moment, but then they fly away. And while we wish they might have stayed longer to share their beauty, we feel blessed for having s-seen them.

Us the most fleeting of all. Just once,everything, only for once. Once and no more. And we, too,once. And never again. But thishaving been once, though only once,having been once on earth—can it ever be canceled?

Who has no house now will not build him one.

We are … the un-proud non-possessors of objects whose chief substance is that of the transient symbol. Our Puritan fear of the love of things turns out to have been groundless after all, for we do not love things or even possess them: they pass through our lives as barium passes through the digestive tract, unassimilated, their function merely to flash signals along the way.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.