Impermanence Quotes

“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”
― Robert Frost

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
― Heraclitus

“Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.”
― Paulo Coelho

“It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.”
― David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“nothing wonderful lasted forever. Joy was as fleeting as a shooting star that crossed the evening sky, ready to blink out at any moment.”
― Nicholas Sparks

“Nothing endures but change.”
― Heraclitus

“Many have died; you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain.”
― Kabir, The Bijak of Kabir

“Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Gift

“And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually.”
― Jimi Hendrix

“All things that have form eventually decay." -Orochimaru”
― Masashi Kishimoto

“A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“Nostalgia is an illness
for those who haven't realized
that today
is tomorrow's nostalgia.”
― Zeena Schreck

“Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I always think everything is going to last forever, but nothing ever does. In fact nothing exists longer than an instant except the thing that we hold in memory”
― Sam Savage, Firmin

“Shapeshifting requires the ability to transcend your attachments, in particular your ego attachments to identity and who you are. If you can get over your attachment to labeling yourself and your cherishing of your identity, you can be virtually anybody. You can slip in and out of different shells, even different animal forms or deity forms.”
― Zeena Schreck

“Vintage books, old china, antiques; maybe I love old things so much because I feel impermanent myself.”
― Josh Lanyon, Fatal Shadows

“Love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow — beautiful while it’s there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

“I have no news
of my coming
or passing away--
the whole thing
happened quicker
than a breath;
ask no questions
of the moth.”
― Farid al-Din Attar (عطار)

“Do not compromise yourself and put your goodness in the same impermanent category as whatever circumstance happening. Be the best you in every circumstance.”
― Steve Maraboli

“When you truly embrace your human impermanence you connect with the power you have, and influence you have, over the time you have.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.”
― Dōgen, A Primer of Soto Zen: A Translation of Dogen's Shobogenzo Zuimonki

“The one close to me now,
even my own body-
these too
will soon become clouds,
floating in different directions.”
― Izumi Shikibu, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan

“Detachment is not giving up the things in this world, but accepting the fact and to be continuously aware that nothing is permanent.”
― Aditya Ajmera

“All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster.”
― Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker

“The Jetavana Temple bells
ring the passing of all things.
Twinned sala trees, white in full flower,
declare the great man's certain fall.
The arrogant do not long endure:
They are like a dream one night in spring.
The bold and brave perish in the end:
They are as dust before the wind.”
― Royall Tyler, The Tale of the Heike

“Exquisite beauty
is often hidden
in life's fragile,
fleeting moments.”
― John Mark Green, Taste the Wild Wonder: Poems