Quotes About Permanence

Time is like a river. As soon as a thing is seen, it is carried away and another takes its place, and then that other is carried away also. —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS         DAVE

You wander around near Independence Park and the Hall of the People, and you get a sense that they will be there forever. But forever is a long time. The people who lived in Washington before the waters came probably thought that about their city. But it's all temporary, baby. Perpetuity is an illusion.

Can a literary character be said to live a life from birth to death or otherwise to undergo a development from beginning to end? Or is a literary character-fixed on the pages of a book, trapped forever in the same few words and actions-the very opposite of a living, developing human being?

We speak of stories ending, when in truth it is we who end. The stories go on and on.

The empty swing set reminds us of this— that what is bad won't be bad forever, and what is good can sometimes last a long, long time.

I think of it..." Jeremiah said slowly. "Like weather or something. You got your rain, your snow, your sunshine. Always changing but still constant, you know?"... "So it's not always raining, is it? But when it's not raining, we know the rain isn't gone forever.

But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.

L'impossible et l'ineffaçable: le réel»

what do all the objects in the world have in common if not the fact of being- and of being nothing but- the provisional permanence of certain changes.

Quién te modeló sobre mi corazón, quién te tatuó sobre mis ojos?

Mi problema sigue siendo el Ser, esa cosa difícil, a veces intuida, pero siempre inefable; mi problema sigue siendo Yo, pero no Yo el que habla sino Yo que calla, desligado, independiente, liberado de mí mismo. Sin ti, sin mí, sin ninguno de lo que somos; un Yo inmutable y permanente.

Among the beliefs I held about the world was that being beautiful should not matter to a woman, because it was one of those things that would go away-- your beauty would go away,and there wouldn't be anything you could do to bring it back.

Only the rocks live forever, Gray Wolf said.

It was Heraclitus, of course, who came up with the formulation that we are never able to step into the same river twice. ... The obverse of Heraclitus's maxim may be that one is never able to step out of the river the same, twice. A neuron in the brain is altered with every experience. The self, if it exists, must be a constantly evolving thing. Those coming to the banks of the Ganges or Jordan to immerse themselves do not expect to leave the same as they arrive.

Allora, come lo si guarda? Lo si guarda guardando il permanere della sua persona nel tempo e nello spazio, cioè la memoria di Lui. Si chiama memoria il contenuto tangibile, sensibile, visibile di una cosa che è incominciata nel passato e rimane anche adesso.

Time draweth wrinkles in a fair face, but addeth fresh colours to a fast friend, which neither heat, nor cold, nor misery, nor place, nor destiny, can alter or diminish.

Feelings are broken boards. Only truth is solid, unchanging, and stable through and through.

Music, once admitted to the soul becomes ... a sort of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and galleries of the memory.

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing — by, for and about human beings. If you lose that focus, you obviate the source of the power and permanence of literature.

When I was little, she thought, I wanted nothing except to stop travelling. I wanted time for each new thing, each new feeling, to be held properly in suspension until it could be joined by the next. Given the chance I could easily hold all those beautiful things together. I could be like a box in which they would be held new forever. Instead, everything aged and changed. People too.

What matters most is what lasts the longest and families are forever.

What matters most is what lasts longest, and our families are for eternity.

I am an utter unbeliever that anything that is violent will have permanent results.

The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.