Quotes About Impermanence

It was like waiting to speak in front of the class... You have to pretend to be listening, but all you can really think abou tis when it's going to be your turn.

We usually appreciate only half the cycle of impermanence. We can accept birth but not death, gain but not loss, or the end of exams but not the beginning. True liberation comes from appreciating the whole cycle and not grasping onto those things we find agreeable.

If there is no blind hope, there is also no disappointment. If one knows that everything is impermanent, one does not grasp, and if one does not grasp, one will not think in terms of having or lacking, and therefore one lives fully.

One is a Buddhist if he or she accepts the following four truths: All compounded things are impermanent. All emotions are pain. All things have no inherent existence. Nirvana is beyond concepts.

It is vital to understand that however positive this worldly life, or even a small part of it, may appear to be, ultimately it will fail because absolutely nothing genuinely works in samsara.

A more appropriate question to ask a Buddhist is simply, "What is life?" From our understanding of impermanence, the answer should be obvious: "Life is a big array of assembled phenomena, and thus life is impermanent." It is a constant shifting, a collection of transitory experiences. And although myriad life-forms exist, one thing we all have in common is that no living being wishes to suffer. We

All methods of Buddhism can be explained with the four seals—all compounded phenomena are impermanent, all emotions are pain, all things have no inherent existence, and enlightenment is beyond concepts. Every act and deed encouraged by Buddhist scriptures is based on these four truths, or seals.

Take me up into your mind once or twice before I die (you know why: just because the eyes of you and me will be full of dirt some day). Quickly take me up into the bright child of your mind.

It is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an interruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gesture mean nothing, or mean too much.

Indoors herself, partaking of tea with old Mrs Butterworth, she reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the audience onto the stage, and all our carefully planned gestures mean nothing, or mean too much.

Remember that we must all die: all these personal relations we try to live by are temporary. I used to feel death selected people, it is a notion one gets from novels, because some of the characters are usually left talking at the end. Now 'death spares no one' begins to be real.

We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness.

she reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gestures mean nothing, or mean too much.

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.

The ever-whirling wheelOf Change; the which all mortal things doth sway.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washèd it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

And you as well must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust.

This summer has been so short, so small. I think that like "Alice" it ate the cake that said "Eat Me", and dwindled and dwindled until it was so tiny that it ran out through the cracks under the door.

All things are in motion, all is in process, nothing abides, nothing will ever change in this eternal moment.

Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear—the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break.

So passes away the glory of the world.

Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with diligence.

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

From the days of old there is no permanence. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death. What is there between the master and the servant when both have fulfilled their doom?