Quotes About Impermanence

The waves move outward from Amber and this, too, may pass away-and me along with it.

He spent long hours meditating on the wisdom of loving living things which invariably ended up dead.

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. —JAMES 4:14

You can be gone tomorrow.

13. Mañana habrá desaparecido (Gone Tomorrow)

She felt a little nervous about this; 'for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while-- and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet-- but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about.

for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

there were lovely things in the world, lovely that didn't endure, and the lovelier for that... Nothing endures.

That society is strong and viable which recognizes its own provisionality.

If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve

Spiritual experiences are like mist, they will evaporate.

The impermanent, which is the body, is given too much importance. The permanent, which is the Atman, is completely forgotten. This should change.

Nothing is more natural than grief, no emotion more common to our daily experience. It's an innate response to loss in a world where everything is impermanent.

This body is not a home, but an inn; and that only for a short time.

This, too, will pass.

Every day the world subtracts from itself and nothingis immune.

When a thing is perfect it is eternal. It can be destroyed afterward, or slowly decay, but its perfection is safe in the past, which is the only inevitable part of the universe.

Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase.

Over the years, my experience, my tastes, my prejudices have changed: as the days go by, my memory keeps reshelving, cataloguing, discarding the volumes in my library, my words and my world - except for a few constant landmarks - are never one and the same. Heraclitus's bon mot about time applies equally well to my reading: "You never dip into the same book twice.

What we put into words are the shadows of shadows, and every book confesses the impossibility of holding fully onto whatever it is that our experience seizes. All our libraries are the glorious records of that failure.

Ending is better than mending.

There's nothing like a re-creation of the event. Which is lucky. Think if one could fully remember perfume or kisses! How wearisome the reality of them would be!

We shall all be 'was' one of these days. Meanwhile....