Quotes About Transience

L'été est étincelant et bref. Il s'arrache au printemps en cinq jours, il s'épanouit en vingt, il se convulse en dix et c'est l'automne.

Algo comienza para terminar; la aventura no admite añadiduras; sólo cobra sentido con su muerte. Hacia esta muerte, que acaso sea también la mía, me veo arrastrado irreversiblemente. Cada instante aparece para traer los siguientes. Me aferro a cada instante con toda el alma; sé que es único, irreemplazable, y, sin embargo, no movería un dedo para impedir su aniquilación.

De improviso se me aparece la verdad: este hombre morirá pronto. Seguramente lo sabe; basta con que se haya mirado en un espejo; cada día se parece un poco más al cadáver que será.

But they never last, the golden days. And it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon, can't it? Yes, it can be sad, the afternoon sun, sad and frightening.

Everything tender and melancholy - as life is sometimes, just for one moment.

I have been too unhappy, I thought, it cannot last, being so unhappy, it would kill you

The house was burning, the yellow-red sky was like the sunset...Nothing would be left, the golden ferns and the silver ferns, the orchids, the ginger lilies and the roses...When they had finished, there would be nothing left but blackened walls and the mounting stone. That was always left. That could not be stolen or burned.

The devil prince of this world, but this world don't last so long for mortal man.

You shut the door and you pull the curtains and then it's as long as a thousand years and yet so soon ended.

No emotion is the final one.

I dreamed I was a single moment in a single day. A note struck and vanished. A sounding. A reckoning. Gone.

Here's my life - I have to mine it, farm it, trade it, tenant it, and when the lease is up it cannot be renewed.

We get somewhere we couldn't go otherwise and we profit from the trip, but we can't stay there, it isn't our world, and we shouldn't let that world come crashing down into the one we can inhabit.

But the rags and the ribbons turn to years and then the years are gone.

If the sun is shining, stand in it – yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass – they have to – because time passes.

Todo en la tierra está en un continuo flujo: nada conserva una forma constante y quieta, y los afectos nuestros, que se vinculan a las cosas exteriores, pasan y cambian necesariamente como ellas. Siempre delante o detrás de nosotros, recuerdan el pasado que ya no es o previenen el porvenir que por lo común no será: no hay ahí nada sólido a lo que el corazón pueda agarrarse.

spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour

Time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.

Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn't let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.

For the moment they wanted to live with the least expenditure, economize words, gestures, thoughts, float: they had only one day in which to smooth out their wrinkles, their crow's feet, the bitter lines made by a hard week's work. One day only.

La mayor parte del tiempo, al no unirse a palabras, mis pensamientos quedan en la niebla. Dibujan formas claras y agradables, se disipan; en seguida las olvido.

Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing—not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence—which is limited only by existence.

The letters I had inscribed on it were not even dry yet and already they belonged to the past.

Mighty king, come from so far, prepared by so many combinations, by so many vanished gestures. He disappears in turn, so that other combinations can be born, other gestures, attacks, counterattacks, turns of luck, a crowd of small adventures.