Quotes About Transience

Because I do not hope to know again The infirm glory of the positive hour Because I do not think Because I know I shall not know The one veritable transitory power

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls Stared from the sockets of the eyes! He knew that thought clings round dead limbs Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

I am no prophet—and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker

It was only a moment, it was only one moment That I stood in sunlight, and thought I might stay there.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. —George Eliot

Gods and angels are known for their transience, their infidelity.

Time goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences too early--almost before you're half-acquainted with life--you meet the other.

When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.

We have not long to love. Light does not stay. The tender things are those we fold away. Coarse fabrics are the ones for common wear. In silence I have watched you comb your hair. Intimate the silence, dim and warm. I could but did not, reach to touch your arm. I could, but do not, break that which is still. (Almost the faintest whisper would be shrill.) So moments pass as though they wished to stay. We have not long to love. A night. A day....

he would die early, since nothing so fair could decline by common degrees in a faded season.

Our desire to preserve is a form of denial about our own mortality. The fact that art can indure longer than people has lead some to seek a form of proxy-immortality through it. If we accept that art is mortal too, and that nothing is truly permanent, maybe we can see more clearly where the value of art and life is to be fount - in experiencing them.

Young would-be novelists and poets believe that art is eternal. Au contraire: we are in the business of ephemera, the era of floating islands of trash, and most of the things we feel deeply and inscribe on the page will disappear.

Sometimes when the year grinds to its end and the new term begins I feel I'm living the life of a fruit fly - the endless ephemeral cycle, each new semester a "fresh start" that leads to the same moribund conclusions.

Leemos por placer, y ya se sabe que el placer no tiene buena memoria y casi en seguida busca renovarse en una nueva experiencia placentera igualmente fugitiva.

No serás más que un recuerdo que morirá con el caer del primer sol.

Oh Maga, en cada mujer parecida a vos se agolpaba como un silencio ensordecedor, una pausa filosa y cristalina que acababa por derrumbarse tristemente, como un paraguas mojado que se cierra.

vienen como todo el resto, se pegan a la vida por un momento y después hay como una ansiedad rencorosa, huecos volcándose para mostrar jirones que se enganchan en cualquier otra cosa...

ningún llanto es eterno

Estúpido —dice Talita besándolo en la oreja—. Esto no va a durar siempre, no va a durar siempre... Esto no debería durar ni un minuto más.

La vida no tiene vuelta. Como la juventud o el viento, la vida pasa y nunca retorna por más que nos neguemos a aceptarlo.

Todas las épocas se terminan y lo mejor es dejar que se desvanezcan en lugar de prolongarlas artificialmente en el tiempo como he visto hacer a muchos ignorando que la naturaleza de éste es precisamente su fugacidad.

PADRE (Al cabo de un rato, señalando las glicinias del jardín, que lo tinen de malva con sus flores). - Mira,¿ves esas flores? Así es la vida de hermosa y de breve. Cuando te das cuenta se ha ido.

Oh, life, life!" Bastidas complained, sipping his drink. "What is life? A little flame at the tip of a candle, exposed to a strong wind.

All things passed away. Even the earth itself, the sky and the river and the stars he loved, would, one day, come to the end of their existence. But it was not a thing to be feared; such was the bittersweet beauty of life. He