Quotes About Transience

The world is mere change, and this life, opinion.

How soon will time cover all things.

life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.

Some things are hurrying into existence and others are hurrying out of it and of that which is coming into existence, part is already extinguished. In this flowing stream then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of things which hurry on by on which a man would set a high price. It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by but has already passed out of sight.

Meditate upon what you ought to be in body and soul when death overtakes you; meditate on the brevity of life, and the measureless gulf of eternity behind it and before, and upon the frailty of everything material.

Swiftly the remembrance of all things is buried in the gulf of eternity.

All is ephemeral, both what remembers and what is remembered.

All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike.

In this flowing stream, then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight.

What am I but a little flesh, a little breath, and the thinking part that rules the whole?

In a little while you will have forgotten everything; in a little while everything will have forgotten you.

Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered

All things fade into the storied past, and in a little while are shrouded in oblivion.

Soon you'll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most - and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, trivial.

In no great while you will be no one and nowhere, and nothing that you now behold will be in existence, nor will anyone now alive. For it is in the nature of all things to change and alter and perish, so that others may arise in their turn.

Everything fades so quickly, turns into legend, and soon oblivion covers it. And those are the ones who shone. The rest—"unknown, unasked-for" a minute after death. What is "eternal" fame? Emptiness. Then what should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring.

Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow "or the day after." Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn't kick up a fuss about which day it was—what difference could it make? Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small.

Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice or ashes. Spend, therefore, these fleeting moments of earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth.

Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?

Soon you will be dead and none of it will matter

People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.

Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised; and the rememberer and the remembered; and all this in a nook of this part of the world; and not even here do all agree; no not anyone with himself; and the whole earth too is a point.

Consider how quickly all things are dissolved and resolved:

To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.