Quotes About Transience

as British economist John Maynard Keynes reportedly stated, "we are all dead.

Oh! ever thus, from childhood's hour,I've seen my fondest hope decay;I never loved a tree or flower,But 'twas the first to fade away.I never nurs'd a dear gazelleTo glad me with its soft black eye,But when it came to know me well,And love me, it was sure to die.

'Tis the last rose of summer,Left blooming alone;All her lovely companionsAre faded and gone.

Beauty is but a flower, which wrinkles will devour.

Matter is changing and transient, but substance or spirit is unchanging and eternal.

The pleasure of sin is soon gone, but the sting remains.

The world is but a great inn, where we are to stay a night or two, and be gone; what madness is it so to set our heart upon our inn, as to forget our home? 1.Consider

The serious thoughts of our short stay here would be a great means of promoting godliness. What if death should come before we are ready? What if our life should breathe out before God's Spirit has breathed in? Whoever considers how flitting and winged his life is, will hasten his repentance!

"There is nothing here abiding; the creature has a little honey in its mouth, but it has wings, it will soon fly away. But if you love God, He is 'a portion for ever' (Psalm 73:26).

Emily: But just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're all happy. Let's really look at one another... I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another.

unloved, educated or illiterate, wanted or unwanted by her parents, whether or not she suffered hurt and betrayal, or whether she still managed to retain her humanity and nobility? In the end, Bhima thinks, it doesn't matter. It is all ash and dust. This is what it means to be human, she thinks: grains of dust arranged in human form—some dark, some light, some tall, some short, some male, some female. And in the end, the same gust of wind breaks them all down.

The clarifying principle made clear the impermanence of things. It was an illusion, all of it—this life that they clung to, this earth that they battled over—a collective exercise in self-deception. The world was perishable.

In the presence of immortality—the endlessly churning sea, the plowed fields of the sky, the loose gypsy wind—the rest of her life feels absurdly, ridiculously mortal and transient. Transient as money, fragile as love. As ethereal and ready to pop as these balloons that are dancing in the wind.

said, "Isn't it funny to think that this magnificent piece of matter is in a state of decay? Really, can you think of any other living thing that looks this glorious as it's dying?

everyone in your life is temporary, except God.

It was the heart of any true moment of decadence: the knowledge that an epoque is already slipping from us, inexorably, even in the moment of its glory.

It was the heart of any true moment of decadence: the knowledge that an époque is already slipping from us, inexorably, even in the moment of its glory.

How easily it can all be washed away. Power, happiness, even life itself. It only takes an instant, a single unguarded instant. And it's gone.

We are only tenants, and shortly the great Landlord will give us notice that our lease has expired.

I always observe the people who pass by when I ride an escalator. I'll never see most of them again, so I imagine a lot of things about their lives... about the day ahead of them.

I personally am not so obsessed about immortality for myself. The human body has been designed that way, obsolescence is OK.

Ali što ?emo s Dvorcem u oblacima? Možda je on ipak važan. (...) Neka ga vjetar nosi, odgovorila je Smisla. I sretan mu put, dodala je Mjera, jer bez obzira koliko bio lijep, on je ipak samo zatvor.

But in the case of human beings, friendship is a transitory art, subject to discontinuance without further notice.

Mil cosas solicitan a la vez nuestra atención y ninguna de ellas logra retenernos; así la vida se nos vuelve arena entre los dedos y las horas humo en el cerebro.