Quotes About Impermanence

you've probably noticed that after the first half-century practically everybody gets leaky, they can't keep it in ... hence the cruelty of long drawn-out meals and drinking sessions ... ships and apartment houses are the same ... everything starts to leak ... sphincters, bladders, drain pipes, bowels ... the half-century is merciless for ladies and gentlemen ... worse for dogs and cats! ... with them it comes sooner! ... five ... six years ...

Quand on a pas d'imagination, mourir c'est peu de choses, quand on en a, mourir c'est trop.

When you have no imagination, dying is small beer; when you do have an imagination, dying is too much.

But we can't have things perfect in this imperfect world

Nada há definitivo no mundo; nem o infortúnio nem a prosperidade. O que a tua imaginação supõe estar perdido, acha-se apenas transviado ou oculto...

Não importa ao tempo o minuto que passa, mas o minuto que vem. O minuto que vem é forte, jucundo, supõe trazer em si a eternidade, e traz a morte, e perece como o outro, mas o tempo subsiste.

Each season in life is a new edition that corrects the preceding one, which will in turn be corrected again, until we reach the definitive edition, which the editor donates for free to the worms.

You human beings tend to want good things to last forever. They don't. Not while we're in time.

I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.

Far too soon it had begun to seem too much of a triumph, it had been too good, too horribly unimaginable to lose, impossible finally to bear: it was as if it had become itself its own foreboding that it could not last, a foreboding that was like a presence too, turning his steps towards the taverns again. And how could one begin all over again, as though the Café Chagrin, the Farolito, had never been?

The moment is altered as soon as I try to capture it, so for me, it's impossible." How true, I thought. Moments are gone as soon as you think about them.

His theatre was the clouds, where no spectacle repeated itself. On land he was a foreigner. Land for him was stasis, and it pulled him into immobility, which was his image of death." —

We are not meant always to be happy, and who would want to be? Happiness would become meaningless if it were a constant state. If you accept that, then you will not be surprised when something bad occurs, you will not gnash your teeth and ask, Why me? Why has this happened to me? It has happened to you because that is the nature of things. No one escapes. The rainbow comes and goes. Enjoy it while it lasts. Don't be surprised by its departure, rejoice when it returns.

Life was nothing other than what came and went with each passing moment.

Is this night a failure because it will end in an hour?

And then, inevitably, one day—it's gone. And we realize that we thought we were the only changing thing, the only variable, in the world; that the objects and people in our lives are there for our pleasure, like the playing pieces of a game, and cannot move of their own accord; that they are held in place by our need for them, by our love. How stupid.

And then, inevitably, one day it's gone. And we realise we thought we were the only changing thing, the only variable in the world. That the objects and people in our lives are there for our pleasure. Like the playing pieces of a game and cannot move of their own accord. That they are held in place by our need for them. By our love. How stupid.

Less takes one last look at the ancient castle of mud and straw, remade every year or so as the rains erode the walls, plastered and replastered so that nothing remains of the old ksar except its former pattern. Something like a living creature of which not a cell is left of the original.

A vida é repleta de tristezas: pouco importa o que fazemos, no final todos vamos morrer; cada um de nós está preso à solidão de um corpo independente; o tempo passa e o que passou nunca voltará. A dor é a nossa primeira experiência de desamparo no mundo, e ela nunca nos deixa.

The idea is not to live forever, it is to create something that will.

Sometimes it seemed as if the past was a painting that she had dipped in water, allowing the colours to run and drip, merge and fade so that an entirely altered landscape remained.

We are all seeking fulfillment while living at the mercy of changing experience. Whatever we acquire in life gets dispersed. Our bodies age. Our relationships fall away. Even the most intense pleasures last only a few moments.

Language is the work of man, of a being from whom permanence and stability can not be derived.

Omens change. Signs shift. Nothing is permanent.