Quotes About Transience

A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on; And the road didn't become more beautiful or even more ugly. That's human action on the outside world. We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget; And the sun is always punctual every day. (5/7/14)

Also at times, on the surface of streams, Water?bubbles form And grow and burst And have no meaning at all Except that they're water?bubbles Growing and bursting.

Nuestros saludos son despedidas: de muchas formas vivimos en el abandono -en a búsqueda de la inconsciencia- pero tal vez lo hacemos porque tenemos tan claro y tan presente que todo va a terminar. Si cada muerte es un apocalipsis en miniatura, porque el mundo termina para quien deja de existir y todo el tiempo hay alguien que muere... Alberto Chimal, del libro "Diarios del Fin del Mundo

Here halt, I pray you, make a little stay,O wayfarer, to read what I have writ,And know by my fate what thy fate shall be.What thou art now, wayfarer, world renowned,I was: what I am now, so shall thou be.The world's delight I followed with a heartUnsatisfied: ashes am I, and dust.

SOME PAINTINGS become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes. I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever from human view. After that it exists only in the mind's eye.

hours hours and hours snap up our pleasures

Come il fiore già rigoglioso sullo stelo cade insieme col fiorellino ancora in boccio, al passar della falce che pareggia tutte l'erbe del prato.

come il fiore già rigoglioso sullo stelo cade insieme col fiorellino ancora in boccia, al passar della falce che pareggia tutte l'erbe del prato

Nothing lives forever even the president

It's the shadow on every kiss and every dollar, that it might not be there tomorrow.

Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, they rise, they break, and to that sea return.

With varying vanities, from ev'ry part,   They shift the moving Toyshop of their heart; 100   Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,   Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive.

Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either.

And this that we call life, it is no more than the opening and closing of a eye a crevice in the unborn through which there shone a beam of light. Perhaps we are only here to say, live in the mercy of the enkindles immensity.

Creatures of clay, vain dwellers in the dust, lonely, we roam like the cloud, the wind, the wave, and all we see is a shadow of things unseen, and time that comes to flee Is but the broken echo of a rhyme In heart's great epic of Eternity.

D'ailleurs la mort est toujours là ; n'est-elle pas partout sous les pieds de l'homme, qui la rencontre à chaque pas dans cette vie ? L'eau, le feu, la terre, tout la lui offre sans cesse ; il la voit partout dès qu'il la cherche, il la porte à son côté.

Regardez moi ce petit corps maigre, ce lendemain d'orgie ambulant.

I call Washington 'the city of the perishable.'

During the six years I spent writing my novel 'The Incarnations,' I lived in seven cities in four countries. I moved in and out of 17 different houses and flats in Beijing, Seoul, Colorado, Boston, Leeds, Washington D.C., London and Shenzhen.

Our birth is nothing but our death begun, As tapers waste the moment they take fire.

After we air the call, it's gone. I always thought, 'What a waste.' That's such a powerful story, and there's no way to revisit it or share it.

I remember as a kid having a balloon and accidentally letting the string go and watching it just float off and into the sky until it disappeared. And there's something about that, even, that feels very much like what life is, you know, that it's fleeting, and it's temporal.

I go through life accumulating possessions... I've always done it... and then, every once in a while, a sort of tidal wave comes along and washes them all away.

If you find your freedom, if you find something that cannot be taken from you, then you're free. If your freedom depends on what you have, or you position, or your security, or anything that is just passing, because those are just waves of things.