Quotes about Transience

How very near us stand the two vast gulfs of time, the past and the future, in which all things disappear.

All is ephemeral--fame and the famous as well.

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man—yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

The sands of time are quicksands ... so much can sink into them without a trace.

Let nothing disturb you nothing frighten you all things are passing God never changes.

We cannot truly face life until we face the fact that it will be taken away from us.

Therefore nothing were better for us than soon to be conveyed to the last dance, and covered with shovels.

Creation is good, but it is not God. It is beautiful, but its beauty is at present transient. It is in pain, but that pain is taken into the very heart of God and becomes part of the pain of new birth.

My life's harvest is not the building material for anything, neither in my time, now, nor in any other, never.

The same fate awaits me too, and Oddball, and the Deer outside; one day we shall all be nothing more than corpses.

We live in a state of siege. If one takes a close look at each fragment of a moment, one might choke with terror. Within our bodies disintegration inexorably advances; soon we shall fall sick and die. Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain. Just a few clothes in the wardrobe and someone in a photograph, no longer recognized. The most precious memories will dissipate. Everything will sink into darkness and vanish.

What is will not last forever.