Quotes About Transience

All things pass, all things, that is, but mystery.

Frequently, to be an American then was to be periodically unmoored, transient, so bereft of options that moving on was the only choice.

We built a perfect little cottage out of sand with the help of Farley's tin and the rusting bucket, and some lichen we peeled from rocks for window-box flowers. We left it there all day, and when the tide came up, the waves refused to disturb it, only lapping away at the foundation enough to cement it more firmly to the beach.

Though it may not be a suitable comment for even this confidential record, I thought, by no means for the first time in such surroundings, what an odd way it was for people of opposite sexes to spend the evening, when, after all, there was nothing ahead that any of us could be sure of but infirmity, illness, and death.

In realizing all this, we understand how we are just bundles of sense perceptions, with the substance of a dream or a bubble on the surface of the sea. The vanity of the usual kind of self-preoccupation becomes clear, and we are freed from selfish concerns in our enjoyment of the universe as it is, and of our own previously unsuspected depths.

Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,A fancy from a flower bell, someone's death,A chorus ending from Euripides.

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,Thou's met me in an evil hour;For I maun crush amang the stoureThy slender stem:To spare thee now is past my pow'r,Thou bonie gem.

But pleasures are like poppies spread—You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;Or like the snow falls in the river—A moment white—then melts forever.

Even tho who mournst the daisies fate, that fate is thine.

We're as ephemeral as raindrops. We all fall, and we all land somewhere.

We are as ephemeral as rain drops.

Let us look at the pedestrians in any busy city and realize that in ninety years it is likely that none of them will be alive, including us. Think of the millions and billions who have already come and gone, buried and long forgotten, rich and poor alike.

It is the natural course of things that power eventually fades and weakens.

Isn't an awareness of their transience what gives these moments their exquisite edge?

vita umbratilis

And it shall come to pass that what men made shall be shattered

The rumpled bed was the only proof that anyone had stayed here. Already the room had lost the feel of him; it even seemed to smell empty, despite his own scent on the sheets. He never stayed anywhere long enough to make that feel cling past his readiness to leave. Never long enough to put down roots, make it any kind of home.

We have multiple dichotomies in our heads, and ones that seem inevitable and crucial can, under the right circumstances, have their importance evaporate in an instant.

We sometimes have a flash of understanding that amounts to the insight of genius, and yet it slowly withers, even in our hands - like a flower. The form remains, but the colours and the fragrance are gone.

Vielleicht ist es ein Fehler, daß wir uns nicht erst als Greise kennen gelernt haben« sagte sie zu sich selbst und hatte die schwermütige Vorstellung zweier Nebelbänke, die am Abend zur Erde sinken. »Sie sind nicht so schön wie der strahlende Mittag,« dachte sie »aber was kümmert es diese zwei formlosen Grauen, wie die Menschen sie empfinden! Ihre Stunde ist gekommen und sie ist so weich wie die glühendste Stunde!«

the man you watched die yesterday doesn't exist today; he fell to yesterday's bullets and you've got today's bullets to deal with. Nevertheless, sometimes it got me to brooding.

How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow.

the train goes fast and is going fast when it crosses a little trestle. You catch the sober, metallic, pure, late-light, unriffled glint of the water between the little banks, under the sky, and see the cow standing in the water upstream near the single leaning willow. And all at once you feel like crying. But the train is going fast, and almost immediately whatever you feel is taken away from you, too.

Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something...