Quotes About Transience

Years had passed, and years had a bad name: a verse of Horace floated into his mind: Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes; eripuere jocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum… and for a moment he tried to make a tolerable English version; but his The years in passing rob us of our delight, of merriment and carnal love, of each in turn, all sport and dining out… did not please him and he abandoned the attempt.

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae,' he repeated yet again, and felt the lap of water on his foot. He looked up. The people had gone; the pyre was no more than a dark patch with the sea hissing in its embers; and he was alone. The tide was rising fast.

variety of other wise saws sprang to Stephen's indignant mind – words and feathers are carried off by the wind; as is the wedding, so is the cake; do not speak Arabic in the house of the Moor; pleasures pass but sorrows stay; love, grief and money cannot be concealed

And it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time.

None of us is going to get out of this world alive.

why can't I stop all the moving and look out over the vast arrangements and find by the contours and colors and qualities of light where my father is, not to solve anything but just simply even to see it again one last time, before what, before it ends, before it stops. But it doesn't stop; it simply ends. It is a final pattern scattered without so much as a pause at the end, at the end of what, at the end of this.

Whenever I'm leaving I get sentimental for that nostalgia I know I won't have the next day.

A man's life will not come again, once it has slipped through his teeth. And no power on earth can bring it back. This is the mortal law. Then no longer will his bones be held together by wet sinews. Then no longer the soul flutter in his mouth. But by Death's blazing light, he is ground out and spent.

I was shown each second passing as the train belted along, ticking off the buildings with a speed that made me melancholy.

The glare of gas station rest stops, mystical, comet-like as they rushed past, but melancholy and ordinary when we paused for the ten-minute breaks.

Look for the truth in nature, I wanted to say to those cookie-eating missionaries in the next compartment; nothing is complete, everything is imperfect, nothing lasts. Go to bed.

Tonight I write this journal entry on my laptop. Other nights I have handwritten entries in notebooks. Sometimes I jot down notes as I ride home in the cab or wait for an appointment. I want all of this -- everything and everyone -- to stay with me.

Who cares for your fashions and your wars and your causes? I will shortly be gone and I have seen many fashions come and go and many causes so passionately defended only to be forgotten.

Outside, as she passed the kitchen window, she watched her breath appear before her in the lamplight and then it died away in moist clouds. This was the smoke of her internal fire and her soul. Every breath was a letter to the world. These she mailed into the cold air leaning back with pursed lips to send it upward.

and that, in the end, the most interesting people always leave.

Whenever someone dies, a part of the universe dies too. Everything a person felt, experience and saw dies with them, like tears in the rain.

How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?

If what one finds is made of pure matter; it will never spoil. and one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing in return.

There is no tragedy, only the unavoidable. Everything has its reason for being: you only need to distinguish what is temporary from what is lasting.

yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments- but all of this is transitory; it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken.

Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments- But all of this is transitory; it leaves no permanent mark.

We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We're willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.

Every situation is a passing memory.

Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.