Quotes About Impermanence

The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.

Time and tide wait for none

Because beautiful things always make us sad,' she replied, closing her eyes and nestling her head against his. 'Why?' 'Because we can't hold onto them forever.' 'No, because they're transient, like a rainbow or a sunset. Nothing beautiful lasts. Or perhaps because they remind us of where we came from and our spirits long to return

Things never quite turn out the way you imagine, do they," Miss Branson said, her voice low and almost amused in tone. "You have to pay attention to the moment in your hands, before it's gone.

No one's book is perfect.

Everything passes, but nothing entirely goes away.

The moment has no time.

Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.

The generations of men run on in the tide of time, but leave their destined lineaments permanent for ever and ever.

But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It's already then.

Do not spend your time thinking about the world or your relationships to individuals. These are all impermanent. They have only to do with the body.

What came is gone forever every time

Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.

Time was rushing around me like water around a big wet rock. The only difference is, I was not so durable as stones. Very quickly I would be smoothed away.

Cities and Thrones and Powers Stand in Time's eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die

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.

I knew that it wouldn't last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place.

Meditation is a tool for helping us accept the profound fact that everything changes all the time.

As we say in the sewer, time and tide wait for no man.

But if you can plant yourself in stillness long enough, you will, in time, experience the truth that everything (both uncomfortable and lovely) does eventually pass.

As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later.

The schoolboy counts the time till the return of the holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he is married.

Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.

In this frightening, anxious time to be alive it can be liberating to remember that nothing lasts forever. That can focus and invigorate our hopes.