Quotes About Transience

As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.

Adieu to those more cheerful hours, Spent amid Spring's unfolding flowers, Or Summer's soothing shade; A few short weeks--and then adieu To fields and groves of changeful hue, By Autumn's hand array'd!

Words are like breath," she said, "you say them and they're gone. But writing traps them.

We must convince each generation that they are transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity's past nor dim its future.

me voy con el viento malvado que me lleva de acá para allá, igual que a la hoja muerta»

Of those cities will remain what passed through them, the wind!

We're not responsible, he thought. This planet is a temporary affair. It's whizzing with all kinds of other ones, a whole range of planetary stuff, toward a star in the Milky Way. On that kind of a planet we're not responsible, he thought.

That cloud, however, blossomed just for minutes And when I gazed up, faded in the wind.

In fondo alla Moldava vanno le pietre, / sepolti a Praga riposano tre re. / A questo mondo niente rimane uguale, / la notte più lunga eterna non è/

Hours fly...Flowers die.

And so a greater share of the night, Laura shed tears into her soft white pillow. Some of them were for old Oscar Lutz.... Some of them were for the general sad fact that hours fly and flowers die. But most of them were shed because of her own sudden and definite realization that even though there come new days and new ways,--love stays.

Special days, special moments don't last forever. Anyone knows that. Breezes of change blow hard and fast.

Morn after morn dispels the dark, Bearing our lives away; Absorbed in cares we fail to mark How swift our years decay; Some maddening draught hath drugged our souls, In love with vital breath, Which still the same sad chart unrolls, Birth, eld, disease, and death.

Life is flowing away like water running out from a leaky vessel.

The mind itself—the seemingly solid, stable mind—dissolves into a stream of cittas flashing in and out of being moment by moment, coming from nowhere and going nowhere, yet continuing in sequence without pause.

That's all we are, a few drops of water in a great river that doesn't know whether we are there or gone. And doesn't care

life can end in less time than it takes to draw one breath.

I live near Thompson Square Park, and there are a lot of colorful people I see in the park - a lot of different personalities and homeless people - you get to know them. And every now and then, there is suddenly someone who is no longer around, and you're just like, 'Wow,' but you never really know what happened to them.

Looking back on high school, I just remember specific scenarios and thinking, wow, that was such a big deal at the time, but right now it feels like it never even happened. So I guess if I can give any advice, I would just say that everything will pass, and it'll feel like it was a big deal over nothing.

I think sometimes we get wrapped up in awards... ultimately, it's just a moment in time, and it passes.

My work is being destroyed almost as soon as it is printed. One day it is being read; the next day someone's wrapping fish in it.

Aren't these the finest treasures? Each one springs up, and becomes more red than rubies, more fine than diamonds adn more valuable, so we are told; and before you can run back here again to look, the petals have begin to drop and the leaves to yellow. Look, they sag, they fall. Are they the more wonderful because they live such a short time.

Literary pleasure, and a sense of recognition and identification, real though they are, burn off like alcohol in the flame of the next heated moment.

A day goes by. Every shiver of grass counts. The shallows and dapples in air that give grass life are like water. The bobcat returns nightly. During easy jags of sleep the dog's dream-paws chase coyotes. I ride to the sheep. Empty sky, an absolute blue. Empty heart. Sunburned face blotches brown. Another layer of skin to peel, to meet myself again in the mirror. A plane passes overhead—probably the government trapper. I'm waving hello, but he speeds away.