Quotes About Impermanence

We cannot count on seeing our work completed here below, and happy is the man whose will is not too painfully invested in his efforts. No house is built, no plan created, in which ruin is not the cornerstone, and what lives imperishably in us does not reside in our works.

Nous ne possédons réellement rien; tout nous traverse.

I have to remind myself that it may never be this good again.

As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.

Of those cities will remain what passed through them, the wind!

That cloud, however, blossomed just for minutes And when I gazed up, faded in the wind.

Special days, special moments don't last forever. Anyone knows that. Breezes of change blow hard and fast.

Only the interactions of the senses and sense objects give cold,heat,pleasure and pain. These are temporary, appearing and disappearing; therefore learn to tolerate without being disturbed (2.14)

Nothing is born which Death makes not subject of his state.

Morn after morn dispels the dark, Bearing our lives away; Absorbed in cares we fail to mark How swift our years decay; Some maddening draught hath drugged our souls, In love with vital breath, Which still the same sad chart unrolls, Birth, eld, disease, and death.

Life is flowing away like water running out from a leaky vessel.

Just as, when a cow to be slaughtered is led to the shambles, whenever she lifts a leg she will be closer to slaughter, closer to death; even so, brahmins, is human life like cattle doomed to slaughter; it is short, limited, and brief. It is full of suffering, full of tribulation. This one should wisely understand. One should do good and live a pure life; for none who is born can escape death.

The mind itself—the seemingly solid, stable mind—dissolves into a stream of cittas flashing in and out of being moment by moment, coming from nowhere and going nowhere, yet continuing in sequence without pause.

life can end in less time than it takes to draw one breath.

A box of new crayons! Now they're all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect. Soon they'll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps, missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors. Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic.

I like the fact that in the theatre nothing is ever finished because you're going to do it all over again tomorrow, whereas in telly once it's wrapped and in the can, that's it.

Still, there is no law that says all decent things must be permanent. Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.

Japanese ideas about religion, architecture, theater, and literature are based on wa and shunyata—concepts of plentitude and uncertainty, of togetherness framed by impermanence.

Comme c'est misérable et trompeur, la vie !.. Il n'y a rien qui dure.

The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert. Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last. Even the sun goes down.

Good works, because they must be forgotten instantly, can never become part of the world; they come and go,leaving no trace. They truly are not of this world.

A sign read: YOUR STAY HERE IS TOUCH AND GO—TOUCH AND YOU GO.

Myron said, "For what breeds time but two hands on a clock?" "Who said that?" "No one. I just made it up.

Everything flows and nothing abides. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.