Quotes about Transience

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow;

I believe that I know and share the many sorrows and sad circumstances that a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them, I do not prolong such moments of agony. They pass through me, like life itself, as a broad, eternal stream, they become part of that stream, and life continues. And as a result all my strength is preserved, does not become tagged onto futile sorrow or rebelliousness.

I am trying to teach my mind to bear the long, slow growth of the fields, and to sing of its passing while it waits.

Blossoming flowers look beautiful before they're cut or picked, but without soil or water they wither more quickly than grass.

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

Women on trains have a life that is exactly livable the precision of days flashing past

What is more melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant...

Our days on earth are as a shadow. 1 CHRONICLES 29:15

The world is not a permanent home, it is only a temporary dwelling.

Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; Improve each moment as it flies!

Clearly we must not be attached to anything, no matter how innocent, because it will slip from our grasp when least expected; nothing but the eternal can content us.

We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world. Standing at the right angle, we are dazzled by the colors of the rainbow in colorless ice. From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow.