Quotes about Transience

the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear [...] without the mitigating circumstances of their transitory nature

Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their whole lives in the course of a single day. From the point of view of a mayfly, human beings are stolid, boring, almost entirely immovable, offering hardly a hint that they ever do anything. From the point of view of a star, a human being is a tiny flash, one of billions of brief lives flickering tenuously on the surface of a strangely cold, anomalously solid, exotically remote sphere of silicate and iron.

We are like butterflies, who flutter for a day and think it's forever.

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them. In fact, real peace and joy are only possible when we see clearly into the nature of impermanence.

There is no single entity whose identity is changeless. All things are constantly changing. Nothing endures forever or contains a changeless element called a self.

When conditions are sufficient, we manifest. When conditions are no longer sufficient, we no longer manifest. It does not mean that we do not exist. Like radio waves without a radio, we do not manifest.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. I cannot keep anything. I come here empty-handed, and I go empty-handed.

We'll drink to-night with hearts as light, To loves as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim, And break on the lips while meeting.

And I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time.

Whatever passes away is too vile to be the price of time, which is itself the price of eternity.

Celebrity was a long time in coming it will go away. Everything goes away.

But nothing on this earth is guaranteed, when you get right down to it, you know? I've been thinking about that. About how your kids aren't really YOURS, they're just these people that you try to keep an eye on, and hope you'll all grow up someday to like each other and still be in one piece. What I mean is, everything you get is really just on loan. Does that make sense? Sure, I said. Like library books. Sooner or later they've all got to go back into the nightdrop.