Quotes About Transience

If love is real, doesn't it then last forever? Why? Life is real, and it doesn't last either

It's funny, all the fussing and the fighting, the things that matter so much in life, all come to nothing, in death.

Every passing moment is the passing of life; every moment of life is life itself.

nothing in the world is permanent. The only permanent thing is impermanence.

It was a strange lightness, a drifting feeling. Zero gravity. I understood that everything that once seemed solid and immovable might just float away. And that this was a truth of life, not an illusion in the grieving mind of a child. Everything that is hard and heavy in your world is made up of billions of molecules in constant motion offering the illusion of permanence. But it all tends toward breaking down and falling away. Some things just go more quickly, more surprisingly, than others.

Good-bye, good-bye,' muttered Gwystyl. 'I hate to see you waste your time, not to mention your lives. But that's the way of it, I suppose. Here today, gone tomorrow, and what's anyone to do about it? Good-bye. I hope we meet again. But not soon. Good-bye.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

The gardener hath gathered up this autumn's leaves. Who shall see them again, or who wot of them? And who shall say what hath befallen in the days of long ago?

and I thought of the nations and unpitying Time

Things between us were dissolving like an ice cub in a glass: the smaller it got, the faster it disappeared.

Someday, like everybody, this man you truly love like no other is going to die. No matter how much you love him, you cannot save him. No matter how much you love: nothing, no one, lasts.

I try. What can I say?" She pauses. "Is all this really happening? I keep thinking that soon it will be over—the life expectancy of a cloud is supposed to be only twelve hours—and then I realize something has occurred that can never ever be over.

Thoughts of leaving will move in, bivouac throughout the living room; they will have eyes like rodents and peer out at you from under the sofa, in the dark, from under the sink, luminous glass beads positioned in twos.

Beauty is precious, you see, and the more beautiful something is, the more precious it is; and the more precious something is, the more it hurts us that it will fade away; and the more we are hurt by beauty, the more we love the world; and the more we love it, the more we are saddened that it is like finely powdered salt that runs away through the fingers, or is puffed away by the wind, or is washed away by the rain.

Yes! a gay life and a short one, then out with the lights and down with the curtain!

We are so brief. A one-day dandelion. A seedpod skittering across the ice. We are a feather falling from the wing of a bird. I don't know why it is given to us to be so mortal and to feel so much. It is a cruel trick, and glorious.

Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

La identidad de cada cual es algo fugitivo y casual y cambiante, de modo que, si dejas de mirar a alguien durante un tiempo largo, puedes perderlo para siempre, igual que si estás siguiendo con la vista a un pececillo en un inmenso acuario y de repente te distraes, y cuando vuelves a mirar ya no hay quien lo distinga de entre todos los otros de su especie.

No he conocido días más hermosos que éstos: es la culminación de mi existencia. Esto es ciertamente la plenitud. El esplendor de la flor, toda abierta, radiante y temblorosa, justo un instante antes de marchitarse.

sin pensar en que nuestra existencia tiene un fin.

Esos vivos no eran más que proyectos de cadáveres.

La vida es eso, Pablo; todo lo que sabemos, todo lo que disfrutamos, todo lo que somos desaparecerá con la muerte. Y da igual que aprendamos la melodía diez años o diez minutos antes del final. Ese final llegará y lo borrará todo. Pero, mientras llega, eso es lo que somos.

You know, it won't ever be like this again. Not ever. Just you and me, and this place and this time. Things only happen once.

Making friends with the impersonal necessity of death is an ethical way of installing oneself in life as a transient, slightly wounded visitor.