Quotes About Transience

The intense atom glowsA moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

Oh,lift me as a wave,a leaf,a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life!I bleed!

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

I lack the World, for I move like a Ghost through it.

They ... know from experience better than almost any other nation on earth how transient are material achievements and pomp and glory. ... the New Order pointed to the ruins of Persepolis as reminders of what Iran had once been and must strive to be again. The Iranian people also see in those ruins a monument to the vanity of human success.

It lasted just a moment, whatever that is. One held breath? An ant's afternoon?

A volte mi sembra che la terra non voglia che le cose durino, ma voglia che tutto crolli e che noi tutti che ne andiamo via. Che voglia tornare al principio, al giardino con i frutti e gli animali, prima che Dio diventasse ambizioso e rovinasse tutto. Avrebbe dovuto riposare al sesto giorno, non al settimo.

I like life. I would not want to live forever, but for a little while, life is fine.

Your reading of these words is very beautiful and, somehow, very sad, because we both know it must end.

Forecasting is not a respectable human activity and not worthwhile beyond the shortest of periods.

But then, ephemerality was the summation of most human activities. The trick was to enjoy the time when things were going right.

I think now that maybe true sweetness can only happen in limbo. I don't know why. Is it because we are so unsure, so tentative and waiting? Like it needs that much room, that much space to expand. The not knowing anything really, the hoping, the aching transience: This is not real, not really, and so we let it alone, let it unfold lightly. Those times that can fly.

Something like laughter. That a flower could be this small, this fleeting, that a snowflake could be so large, so persistent. The improbable simplicity. I groaned. Why don't we have a word for the utterance between laughing and crying?

This was our ritual while we waited for our lives to truly begin and I think now that maybe true sweetness can only happen in limbo. I don't know why. Is it because we are so unsure, so tentative and waiting? Like it needs that much room, that much space to expand. The not knowing anything really, the hoping, the aching transience: This is not real, not really, and so we let it alone, let it unfold lightly. Those times that can fly. That's the way it seems now looking back.

Remember me," whispers the dust.

Therefore their inhabitants, devoid of power, are dismayed and ashamed. They are like plants in the field, tender green shoots, grass on the rooftops, scorched before it is grown.

For we are foreigners and strangers in Your presence, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.

how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!

They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.

Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?í

But my brothers are as faithless as wadis, as seasonal streams that overflow,

but ceasing in the dry season and vanishing from their channels in the heat.

My days are swifter than a weaverís shuttle; they come to an end without hope.