Quotes About Impermanence

Just as the river where I step is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not.

If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.

We never step in the same river twice.

The river where you set your foot just now is gone those waters? hiving way to this, now this.

Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers. All is flux, nothing stays still.

Change is the only thing that endures

Everything flows, nothing remains

You cannot step twice into the same river.

You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

Occasionally a yellow leaf fell from the tree. Then one or the other of us would turn up his eyes as though to see the leaf fall once again. We didn't wait for the next leaf, which fell a little later. Out eyes lacked the patience. We didn't commit ourselves to leaves. Only to flying splashes of yellow that distracted our faces from one another's

We are always dying – I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or block their ears; they are all dying.

I wanted this world to still. I wanted to fix it and be fixed within it. But everything was on the move, the clouds, the wind...

Space is so dark that looking out at it confounds the brain. The more you stare at the vastness of it, at the hanging stars and the swirling galaxies, the more you start to notice how imprecise words like 'dark' and 'black' and 'endless' are. There are so many gradients of shadow, all of them terrifying to me. That's why I keep the lights on.

It'll rot,' I say. 'And so will we.

Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

All this is gone forever - events, men. everything slips away, like the ceaseless waves of the Yangtze that vanish into the sea.

Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly, And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking. Which was the real - the butterfly or the man ? Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things? The water that flows into the depth of the distant sea Returns in time to the shallows of a transparent stream. The man, raising melons outside the green gate of the city, Was once the Prince of the East Hill. So must rank and riches vanish. You know it, still you toil and toil - what for?

And a moment that ought to have lasted for ever Has come and gone before I knew.

On my way. Nearly there! These were their last foolish (and often misspelled) words. Madeline

Perhaps nothing was ever "meant to be." There was just life, and right now, and doing your best. Being a bit "bendy." "We'll

What happened never mattered all that much because he was always about to leave,

Nothing is forever except change.

So much of this trip had been spent gazing at spectacular sights, which always filled me, as this one did now, with agonizing frustration. Why couldn't I simply accept and enjoy beauty? What was it that stirred up this terrible discomfort? ...We agreed it was the impermanence, the inability to possess, the reminder of death.

If we don't insist on defining impermanence as unsatisfactory, then it's natural to celebrate. Just a moments pause to consider the passing of the seasons is enough to convince anyone that not only is impermanence the source of all possible joy in this life but its the movement of life itself.