Quotes About Transience

She, for her part, was accustomed to my leavings and didn't complain too much. But she still felt about me what she'd always felt, which was what I wouldn't really feel about her until after she was gone. I hate it when Daylight Savings Time starts while you're here, she told me while we were driving to the airport, because it means I have an hour less with you.

I may be dead tomorrow, I said to myself, but

Infinitesimally soon, the eternity of his own death would commence and render all of this unreal.

It was the prospect of another two or three or five years of sex in the ashes that made me think of death.

The earth itself was unchangeable, the endless tracts of sand and water and pavement. It was the people, the perturbable madmen who roamed its surface, who viewed the world as transient and broken. Everett wished the earth could somehow reach up and still them, the crazy people, and invest them with its silence and permanence and depth.

I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.

We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.

I wish my days could be washed away like the chalk lines of my days.

Death is the only thing in life that you absolutely have to be aware of as it's happening.

everything comes and goes; pleasure moves on too early and trouble leaves too slow

I said there are certain flowers that wilt if you put them in a vase' (368).

There are certain kinds of flowers-have you ever noticed?-that are beautiful and fragrant as long as they grow in the garden. But if you put them in vases, even silver vases, they wilt and die (272)

Me guste o no, voy a ser abandonado por cada persona, por cada cosa, por cada situación, por cada etapa, por cada idea, tarde o temprano, pero inevitablemente.

Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

The art of writing is mysterious, the opinions we hold are ephemeral....

Things became duplicated in Tlön; they also tend to become effaced and lose their details when they are forgotten. A classic example is the doorway which survived so long as it was visited by a beggar and disappeared at his death. At times some birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater.

So my life is a point-counterpoint, a kind of fugue, and a falling away–and everything winds up being lost to me, and everything falls into oblivion, or into the hands of the other man.

Las cosas se duplican en Tlön; propenden asimismo a borrarse ya perder los detalles cuando los olvida la gente. Es clásico el ejemplo de un umbral que perduró mientras lo visitaba un mendigo y que se perdió de vista a su muerte. A veces unos pájaros, un caballo han salvado las ruinas de un anfiteatro.

Si para todo hay término y hay tasa y última vez y nunca más y olvido ¿quién nos dirá de quién en esta casa, sin saberlo, nos hemos despedido?

La muerte (o su alusión) hace preciosos y patéticos a los hombres. Estos conmueven por su condición de fantasmas; cada acto que ejecutan puede ser último; no hay rostro que no esté por desdibujarse como el rostro de un sueño. Todo entre los mortales tiene el valor de lo irrecuperable y de lo azaroso.

Timpul nu reface ceea ce pierdem, veÅŸnicia p?streaz? totul pentru slava ei sau pentru a-l încredinÅ£a focului mistuitor.

All things go off, leaving us. Old age is probably the supreme solitude - except that the supreme solitude is death. - Blindness

L'incandescente mattina di febbraio in cui Beatriz Viterbo morì, dopo un'imperiosa agonia che non si abbassò un solo istante al sentimentalismo né al timore, notai che le armature di ferro di plaza Constitución avevano cambiato non so quale pubblicità di sigarette; il fatto mi dispiacque, perché compresi che l'incessante e vasto universo già si separava da lei e che quel mutamento era il primo di una serie infinita. - incipit del racconto L'Aleph .

La Recoleta ... Aqui não estarei eu. Estarão o meu cabelo e as minhas unhas, que não saberão que o resto estará morto, e continuarão a crescer e serão pó. Aqui não estarei eu, que serei parte do esquecimento que é a frágil substância de que é feito o universo.