Quotes About Impermanence

Indestructible does not mean utterly invincible.

Segmentar la historia es realizar un ejercicio arbitrario; en rigor, es imposible precisar el origen exacto de un acontecimiento histórico, igual que es imposible precisar su exacto final: todo acontecimiento tiene su origen en un acontecimiento anterior, y éste en otro anterior, y éste en otro anterior, y así hasta el infinito, porque la historia es como la materia y en ella nada se crea ni se destruye: sólo se transforma.

If Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to live forever? Hence, if we wish to form a lasting institution, let us not think about making it eternal. In order to succeed we should not attempt the impossible, or flatter ourselves that we are giving the work of men a solidity that does not belong to human things.

Nothing is solid. Nothing is fixed. These are images that time changes and that change time, just as the sun and the rain play on the surface of things.

Raccontami una storia, Pew. Che storia, piccola? Una a lieto fine? Non ne troverai una in tutto il mondo. Nessun lieto fine, dunque? Nessuna fine.

Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment...

Todo en la tierra está en un continuo flujo: nada conserva una forma constante y quieta, y los afectos nuestros, que se vinculan a las cosas exteriores, pasan y cambian necesariamente como ellas. Siempre delante o detrás de nosotros, recuerdan el pasado que ya no es o previenen el porvenir que por lo común no será: no hay ahí nada sólido a lo que el corazón pueda agarrarse.

spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour

Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing—not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence—which is limited only by existence.

And, hey, I'm not under the illusion that everything's just going to be hunky-dory work-wise forever. I've never been under that illusion. Things could go away tomorrow.

At the museum a troubled woman destroys a sand painting meticulously created over days by Tibetan monks. The monks are not disturbed. The work is a meditation. They simply begin again.

All things that are born must die. Work hard for your own freedom from sorrow.

I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.

I feel very much aware of my mortality. I'm here, and then I'm not. It's the same thing with everything else: the movie comes out, and then it's gone. Everything is changing all the time, and I'm not going to stress out and spend my entire time chasing something that ultimately doesn't exist.

Time erodes both steel and stone.' So Ovid had written in the months before his death.

New technology is useful, but it's inefficient and ugly it knows it'll be obsolete by lunchtime tomorrow, so it has no incentive to be anything else.

Dat zou pas een boek zijn. Nog tijdens het lezen mag het papier verbrokkelen en rotten. Of nee, de inkt vergaat. Dat ware nog het mooist. Je bent onder aan een bladzijde, de duim waarmee je het boek vasthoudt, bevindt zich rechts onderaan, vlak onder het laatste woord, je blikt omhoog, naar de bladzijde die je net hebt gelezen, en de bovenste regel is al helemaal verdwenen, opgeslokt door de blankheid van zijn blad.

Er woekert een hardnekkig misverstand, bij kenners en bij leken, dat schrijven 'bewaren' betekent. Het is natuurlijk andersom. Schrijven is vernielen, bij gebrek aan beter. Waar je over schrijft gaat pas dan en juist daardoor voorbij. Literatuur is loslaten. Schrijven is verdrijven.

You're right. I don't need them in front of me, Sis. But, as each tree is different, so is each branch and leaf and flower. What I'm painting this afternoon can't be painted again. They're all different. Once this flower dies there won't be another quite the same.

Iš ties?, aš taip nebijau, kaip tur??iau bijoti. Ir ne tod?l, kad esu tikinti. Ne d?l mžino gyvenimo. O tod?l, kad žinau, jog viskas yra laikina, viskas praeina".

You believe it's cold, but if you build yourself a snowhouse it's warm. You think it's white, but at times it looks pink, and another time it's blue. It can be softer than anything, and then again harder than stone. Nothing is certain.

There were little animals everywhere. They could turn up between the covers of a book, flattened and dead, for the fact is that creeping animals, tattered animals, and dead animals are with us all our lives, from beginning to end.

Whenever ego suffers from fear of death & your practice turns to seeing impermanence, ego settles down.

Quite clearly. Also a few where you die tomorrow. Actually the next couple of months are quite perilous for you altogether.