Quotes About Impermanence

I was still thinking about what she said about waves, and it made me sad because I knew that her little wave was not going to last and soon she would join the sea again, and even though I know you cannot hold on to water, still I gripped her fingers a little more tightly to keep her from leaking away.

time isn't something you can spread out like butter or jam, and death isn't going to hang around and wait for you to finish whatever you happen to be doing before it zaps you

I whispered Now! ... Now! ... Now! ... over and over, faster and faster, into the wind as the world whipped by, trying to catch the moment when the word was what it is: when now became NOW. But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It's already then.

Everything in the universe is constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives. That's what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again. And just like that, you die.

For the time being, standing on the tallest mountaintop, For the time being, moving on the deepest ocean floor, For the time being, a demon with three heads and eight arms, For the time being, the golden sixteen-foot body of a buddha, For the time being, a monk's staff or a master's fly- swatter, For the time being, a pillar or a lantern, For the time being, any Dick or Jane, For the time being, the entire earth and the boundless sky.

whispered Now! . . . Now! . . . Now! . . . over and over, faster and faster, into the wind as the world whipped by, trying to catch the moment when the word was what it is: when now became NOW. But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It's already then.

Shiki fu i ku, ku fu i shiki.70

Because Harry knew there was no forever. Not for them. Such things were impossible. There was only today, there was only tonight. And he'd do well not to forget it.

Nothing is forever, he thought beyond closed eyelids somewhere over Asia Minor. Maybe unhappiness is the continuum through which a human life moves, and joy just a series of blips, of islands in the stream. Or if not unhappiness, then at least melancholy.

No dominion is everlasting.

Careers are here and they're gone. No matter how great we think we are, we're nothing but the temples of Ozymandias-we're ruins in the making.

People still don't appreciate how ephemeral success is.

That's the thing about things. They fall apart, always have, always will, it's in their nature.

for since Munro's chosen form is the short story, her overriding theme is brevity—look now, act now, contemplate now, because soon, very soon, this thing that involves you will be over.

Do you know what O'Keefe Says about blue? he asked her, blowing out a cloud of smoke, warming to her voice, though he did not remember her face clearly from the opening night's exhibition. What? That it is the color that will remain after everything is destroyed.

What came is gone forever every time

Nothing is ever fixed. From the moment it is born, from the moment it is built, everything is always dying, decaying, drifting into chaos.

No matter how great and glorious the making, time will unmake it. No matter how strong the word, strong the thought, strong the law, all must return to chaos.

Moartea ne a?teapt? pe to?i. Nimic nu dureaz? o ve?nicie. Iar scopul omului în via?? e s? încerce s? fac? totul cât mai bine.

Nada es para siempre. La vida consiste en aprovechar bien lo que te encuentras en el camino. Si un hombre no está satisfecho con lo que tiene… bueno, muy posiblemente tampoco se quedará satisfecho con lo que no tiene. - Brand

From the moment it is born, from the moment it is built, everything is always dying, decaying, drifting into chaos.

The price of being alive is that someday you aren't.

Later, she thought, not imagining that there wouldn't be a later. Not for Father Storey.

Reading is the way mankind delays the inevitable. Reading is the way we shake our fist at the sky. As long as we have these epic, improbable reading projects arrayed before us, we cannot breathe our last: Tell the Angel of Death to come back later; I haven't quite finished Villette.