Quotes About Impermanence

Anyone can die. Rule number one is don't get too attached to a character, anyone can go.

Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.

I always knew that 'Growing Pains' was not going to go on forever. I remember thinking, 'I'm going to enjoy every moment of this.'

I paint flowers so they will not die.

I like the transience of Klimt paintings.

Often I have the impression that I am writing on paper that is already browning in the licks of the flames.

A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

Glück macht keine guten Geschichten. Glück lässt sich nicht beschreiben. Es ist wie Nebel, wie Rauch, durchsichtig und flüchtig. Hast du jemals einen Maler gesehen, der Rauch malen konnte?

Suzuki had just finished giving a talk to a group of Zen students when someone in the audience said, "You've been talking about Buddhism for nearly an hour, and I haven't been able to understand a thing you said. Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?" After the laughter died down, Suzuki replied calmly, "Everything changes.

Everything in life is just for a while.

No single thing abides; and all things are fucked up.

Things do not have to last forever to be good, and when they end, it is not always proof that one's principles were wrong.

Autumn is the season of subtractions, the Japanese art of taking more and more away to charge the few things that remain. At least four times as many classical poems are set in autumn and spring, the seasons of transition, than in summer and winter. But what that means, I realize as the years pass, is that nothing can be taken for granted; people are on alert, wide awake, ready to seize each day as a blessing because the next one can't be counted on.

The Big Show was over. The public had been satisfied. The programme had been rather heavy, the actors not too bad, and the lions had eaten the trainer. It would be discussed for a day or two more round the family table. And even when it was all forgotten—the band, the fireworks, the resplendent uniforms—there would still remain on the village green the holes of the tent pegs and a circle of sawdust. The rain and the shortness of man's memory would soon wipe out even those.

I think writing, or any form of art-making, is a way to prepare for not being here. Not that we can. No amount of preparing can really ready us, in a meaningful way, for the great void that awaits us all.

I believe that everything has a shelf life.

The sun can't shine forever.

Nothing very very good and nothing very very bad ever lasts for very very long.

All this can dissolve in a moment, when awareness apprehends what is actually unfolding … like the soap bubble being touched by the finger. Liberation from suffering in that very moment. Liberation from greed, hatred, and delusion. Now for the next moment, which, of course, is this one.

We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce.

Anything that can be proven cannot last.

Du skal bare huske at det ikke er en perfekt krig i en perfekt verden.

The basic Buddhist teaching of impermanence (Pali: anicca) suggests that even the most powerful spiritual experiences come and go like clouds in the sky. The point of practice is to realize a truth so deep and fundamental that it doesn't change, because it's not an experience at all; it's the nature of reality itself. This undeniable, unalterable realization is known as enlightenment.