#transience

You're saying nothing lasts forever, he heard the fellow whine. (Well, pretty trite, he thought.) No, he heard her say. I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and amongst those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered. She went on talking after this, but he homed in on that. That was better, he thought. I liked that. ↗

— Iain M. Banks

#meet-cute #shias-engin #transience #home

But life is just a party, and parties weren't meant to last. ↗

— Prince

#time #transience #life

Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#loss #posessions #transience #nothing

Like vanishing dew, a passing apparition or the sudden flash of lightning -- already gone -- thus should one regard one's self. ↗

— Ikkyu

#ozymandias #self #transience #wind #zen

Flowers, cold from the dew, And autumn's approaching breath, I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids, Which haven't faded yet. In their nights, fragrantly resinous, Entwined with delightful mystery, They will breathe in her springlike Extraordinary beauty. But in a whirlwind of sound and fire, From her shing head they will flutter And fall—and before her They will die, faintly fragrant still. And, impelled by faithful longing, My obedient gaze will feast upon them— With a reverent hand, Love will gather their rotting remains. ↗

— Anna Akhmatova

#death #dying #love #transience #beauty

To know yourself you must know the transience of your self. ↗

— Ilyas Kassam

#evolution #impermanence #quantum #self #transience

I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head. ↗

— Omar Khayyám

#caesar #flowers #hyacinth #mortality #rose

We are here in a wood of little beeches: And the leaves are like black lace Against a sky of nacre. One bough of clear promise Across the moon. It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me. He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh, Stilling it in an eternal peace, Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands Toward him, And is eased of its hunger. And I know that this passes: This implacable fury and torment of men, As a thing insensate and vain: And the stillness hath said unto me, Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame, Out of the terrible beauty of wrath, I alone am eternal. One bough of clear promise Across the moon ↗

— Frederic Manning

#path #sufi #sword-sentiments #transience #beauty

What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone. ↗

— Eckhart Tolle

#desire #life #transience #worry #dating

You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing. ↗

— Colson Whitehead

#change #consumerism #individuality #loss #memories