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Quotes About Transience

The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert. Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last. Even the sun goes down.
~ Guy Gavriel Kay
Man is a bird full of mud, I say aloud. And death looks on with a casual eye and scratches his anus.
~ Anne Sexton
A mass of dust, world's momentary slave, Is man, in state of our old Adam made, Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade.
~ Barnabe Barnes
Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.
~ Philip Pullman
We are things of a day. What are we? What are we not? The shadow of a dream is man, no more.
~ Pindar
Man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections their author.
~ Samuel Johnson
Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?
~ William Butler Yeats
Lustre of man walking proud beneath the sky diminishes to nothing and goes unregarded.
~ Aeschylus
Man's wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.
~ Edmund Spenser
We are all dead men on leave.
~ Eugen Levine
There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal--
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Like flowers scattered in a storm, a man's life is a long farewell.
~ Haruki Murakami
How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.
~ Tennessee Williams
Physical beauty is passing - a transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all these things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years!
~ Tennessee Williams
Everything passes—Robust artAlone is eternal.The bustSurvives the city.
~ Theophile Gautier
That beautiful day passed just as the saddest ones do, since the most radiant of days has a tomorrow.
~ Thérèse de Lisieux
Time is your boat not your home.
~ Thérèse de Lisieux
Life is your barque not your home!"80
~ Thérèse de Lisieux
Life is your barque not your home!
~ Thérèse de Lisieux
The interval is immense between corporeal qualifications and sciences: the body in a moment is extinct, but knowledge endureth to the end of time.
~ The Hitopadesa
What falls away is always. And is near.
~ Theodore Roethke
Bright youth passes swiftly as a thought.
~ Theognis
Sic transit gloria mundi [So passes away the glory of this world].
~ Thomas a Kempis
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi (Thus passes the glory of the world).
~ Thomas a Kempis