Quotes About Transience

La vita non ci appartiene, ci attraversa. La

in twenty seconds nothing was to be seen of her except floating fragments;

Think of me as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, some day you'll be, So now prepare to follow me. Someone,

High in the Dales one can find: Think of me as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, some day you'll be, So now prepare to follow me. Someone, perhaps a night-duty policeman, had added the following: To follow you I'm not content, I do not know which way you went.

Poems do seem to want to announce, over and over, that life's warm zephyrs are blowing past and the gravestones are just beyond the next rise. Little groupings of gravestones, all leaning and cracked, with a rusty black Victorian fence around them. They're just over that rise. Poets never want to forget that. And actually we need to hear that sometimes.

Oh, we will know, won't we? The stars will explode in the sky Oh, but they don't, do they? Stars have their moment and then they die

Stars have their moments then they die.

For me, an image becomes meaningless inasmuch as it's always temporary.

For me, an image becomes meaningless inasmuch as it's always temporary. See, I've gone off on that tangent again, because you asked me about the image and all that. I just couldn't relate to all that side of things because, all that time, I was focused on trying to make the music sound half-way decent.

When I think of Simone now, I think of butterfly wings. Beautiful and excruciatingly delicate. Touch them once and they might disintegrate.

she would always be, at the very best, a dewdrop on life's river bank.

The scent of spring flowers, delicate as lace, there and gone again. Utterly unlike Atlanta.

The modern world seems invincible. Like the extinct dinosaurs.

Worauf steuert die Welt zu? Auf dieselbe Vergänglichkeit, aus der sie kommt.

Hâtons-nous; le temps fuit et nous traîne avec soi: Le moment où je parle est déjà loin de moi.

Comme une eau, le monde vous traverse et pour un temps vous prête ses couleurs. Puis se retire, et vous replace devant ce vide qu'on porte en soi, devant cette espèces d'insuffisance centrale de l'âme qu'il faut bien apprendre à côtoyer, à combattre, et qui, paradoxalement, est peut-être notre moteur le plus sûr.

cela m'excite de penser à tout ce qui fuit dans la vie au nom de la vie.

It was strange to realize that after this night I would never see it again as it was. The room had never looked so beautiful as it did at that moment.

It's always best to look ahead and not backwards. Possessions are not important. Think of those beautiful porcelain pieces I had. Before they came to me, they had all passed through the hands of many people, surviving wars and natural disasters. I got them only because someone else lost them. While I had them, I enjoyed them; now some other people will enjoy them. Life itself is transitory. Possessions are not important.

You don't dare to think ahead too much, for you don't want this melted under the heat of your attention, don't want it gone from your life.

But nothing is lasting in this world. Even joy begins to fade after only one minute. Two minutes later, and it is weaker still, until finally it is swallowed up in our everyday, prosaic state of mind, just as a ripple made by a pebble gradually merges with the smooth surface of the water.

But there is nothing enduring in the world, and therefore even joy in the second minute is already not as acute as in the first; in the third minute it becomes still weaker and finally merges unnoticeably with the usual condition of the soul, as a circle on the water, caused by the fall of a pebble, finally merges with the smooth surface.

But nothing is permanent in this world. Joy in the second moment of its arrival is already less keen than in the first, is still fainter in the third, and finishes by coalescing with our normal mental state, just as the circles which the fall of a pebble forms on the surface of water, gradually die away.

Non è panno questo, ma gloria: come soffia un po' di vento vola via.