Quotes About Transience

Life will be life and death will be death

I wondered how many people had sung By the dawn's early light' yesterday and were dead today.

Time is such a funny thing; one minute it's forever & the next, it's gone.

the end of Rilke's Duino Elegies: Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.

I hope [Willa] still thinks butterflies are beautiful. I think they are. We shouldn't think for a moment that just because their lives are short they shouldn't be here.

Growing up means realizing that no time of one's life is the best one, and resolving to savor every second of joy within reach. You know each will pass, and you no longer experience that as betrayal.

Up to a point, the weight and seriousness of such photographs survive better in a book, where one can look privately, linger over the pictures, without talking. Still, at some moment the book will be closed. The strong emotion will become a transient one.

William uncorked the bottle and poured. 'Here's to the end of summer.' 'A beautiful summer,' Bernard added. 'I wish it would last forever,' Alice said. 'You wouldn't value it as much,' said Bernard. 'When joys are sparse, they sink into you more deeply.

was gone, suddenly and irretrievably, like a zephyr shooting into the night sky, leaving a trail of moonlit particles that swirled in brief, unspeakable beauty, and then faded into nothing.

For the duration of its collective life, or the time during which its identity may be assumed, each class resembles a hotel or an omnibus, always full, but always of different people.

Yet each day that touches us, and every man in the world, is unique; irredeemable; over. And just another Monday.

I've been given an amazing opportunity and I could not be more grateful. But I also know that all this will eventually die off. It's not real. It will go away and then you'll go away and then, I don't know, I'll be left sitting in some English hotel room.

But even in this card, as in all cards: transience. The faces in the crowd — faces that will watch the every move of the lordly All-Star in the foreground — have been blurred to something like Monet's lily pads, those hypnotic omens of the inevitable dusk into which we'll all dissolve. All names, even those of the greatest among us, will eventually unravel to silence.

Try to see that life is fleeting. Try to absorb and convey carpe diem for the sake of our children.

We are here to prepare for not being here.

Y el pequeño tocador donde ya no queda sino un solo frasco que no sostiene sino polvo endurecido sobre una sustancia seca y transparente como resina mineralizada en la que quedó encerrada y conservada una mariposa nocturna para materializar y preservar la imagen del revolotear sin causa.

El amor es maravilloso y absurdo e, incomprensiblemente, visita a cualquier clase de almas. Pero la gente absurda y maravillosa no abunda; y las que lo son, es por poco tiempo, en la primera juventud. Después comienzan a aceptar y se pierden.

Só tinha duas orientações. A primeira era que, com o governante no ativo – rei, presidente ou general – nunca se discute, uma vez que, afinal, ele é provisório.

Por delicadas que sean, las mañanas envilecen; lo destructible vacila y lo que pareciera, frente a nosotros, perdurar, no nos acoge, menos cruel que indiferente.

Nothing can last forever. There isn't any memory, no matter how intense, that doesn't fade out at last.

No existe ningún recuerdo por intenso que sea que no se apague...

There are moments when everything goes well; don't be frightened, it won't last.

There are no friends; only moments of friendship.

Warten ist Gegenwart. Das generelle Verhältnis des Menschen zur Zeit. Warten zeichnet Gottes Umrisse an die Wand. Warten ist jenes Durchgangsstadium, das wir als unsere Existenz bezeichnen!