Impermanence Quotes

“It was as though she had reached some state of acceptance about life–that if there was a bad experience, there wouldn’t only be bad experiences. She realized that she hadn’t tried to end her life because she was miserable, but because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery. That, she supposed, was the basis of depression as well as the difference between fear and despair. Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“We get tattoos in the same spirit in which we write books. The crucial thing in both cases is to do it while you still have the nerve to say what’s true before it gets overlaid by other truths. Write books full of insight you know will vanish, that you know you’ll come to regret voicing even, before you become someone else, someone mellower or happier, more compromised or timid, someone who can no longer withstand the truths you have it in you now to express. Even if you eventually regard such truths as dangerous mistakes, they’ll have been your stepping stones to the knowledge of the future. Books and tattoo must be records of disappearing ideals.”
― Rob Doyle, Autobibliography

“What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's King
Cheops erected the first pyramid
And largest, thinking it was just the thing
To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;
But somebody or other rummaging,
Burglariously broke his coffin's lid:
Let not a monument give you or me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.”
― Lord Byron, Don Juan

“People and things will come and go. Everything in this life is transient. This is why spirit must always be our first priority. For it is our only true constant.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“There is a veil of gravity in his eyes, but no sadness. In a confidential tone, he speaks about this lama who had been close to him and was just a little older. His death is a reminder of impermanence, in the Buddhist sense, which asserts the transitory quality of sentient beings and phenomena. Everything that is born from causes and conditions is perishable. Impermanence contradicts our feeling of the lasting quality of time and our human desire for immortality. It is unbearable for ordinary beings who have not trained their mind to conceive of the world's absence of reality. Denial of impermanence represents one of the main causes of suffering in our existences. Buddhist teachings invite us to contemplate and accept it.”
― Sofia Stril-Rever, My Spiritual Journey: Personal Reflections, Teachings, and Talks

“It struck Rosie that nowadays everyone lived the way gay men like Kraft had always lived; in brief collisions, restless, among lovers whom there was no way to fix except for as long as you could hold their hands. And then what? And then remember them, and keep in touch: friends.”
― John Crowley, Ægypt

“Everything and everyone will be taken away from you. You will go away from everything and everyone. This is the process of Life. Trust the process.”
― AVIS Viswanathan

“You wake up from your stupor, from taking your Life for granted, only when you understand its transient nature. When you realize that it is a limited-period offer, that it is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…that’s when you really start living!”
― AVIS Viswanathan

“We had found a more binding union than could be afforded us through mere Particle Egalitarianism. Now, we were all residents of the Accursed Lands.”
― Ashim Shanker, Inward and Toward

“One of the antidotes to emotional afflictions is meditation on emptiness. As we deepen our experience of emptiness, we get a powerful surge of emotion, which itself acts to counter the negative, or afflictive, emotions. We also find in Buddhist practice specific antidotes to specific problems. For example, we meditate on loving kindness to counter hatred and hostility, and on impermanence to counter strong attachment. In other words, the emotion of love is generated as an antidote to anger and the experience of impermanence as an antidote to attachment.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment

“The future when everybody changes and turns into someone different. I’ll become a person I won’t like at all. It won’t matter because that person will have forgotten all about me. I won’t exist anymore. It’s worse than dying- It means my life now is not really happening.”
― Rachel Klein, The Moth Diaries

“There may be such intelligences and such starships, but pulsars are not their signature. Instead, they are the doleful reminders that nothing lasts forever; that stars also die.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Dealing with the death of loved one is always difficult. No matter how much we know of death, of the process of Life, no amount of preparation to accept death is sufficient. When death comes calling in our circle, we are always caught struggling to cope. Immersing yourself in celebrating the Life of the one you lose is one better way of coping. In celebration, there is an uplifting energy. It helps you to look back at each moment you can recall with the person you lost and relive them. Or support causes they supported. Through these acts you heal yourself, you train your mind to let go and move on. It is a slow process, but it works. Important, don't try to fight your sadness. It is futile. Sadness is a natural response. Feeling sad is integral to the process of dealing with a loss. Instead understand your sadness, go its root, understand its futility...and then pluck it and discard it...”
― AVIS Viswanathan

“The diminishing fiery shell reached them as well. It melted everything in its path, starting with the corner of the island. Even the ocean water boiled until it evaporated, then turned the molecules into plasma as if that weren't enough. The plasma vapor, thousands of degrees hot, removed their flesh and carbonized them to the bone. Not even Dazai's power to nullify other skills could nullify the collateral plasma vapor. He and Kunikida became but shadows, burned into the pavement—but even that pavement instantly melted away. Dazai muttered something the moment he vanished, but even the air that came out of his mouth turned into plasma, never to be heard.”
― Kafka Asagiri, 文豪ストレイドッグス 55Minutes [Bungō Stray Dogs 55 Minutes]

“Everything that seems to us imperishable tends towards decay; a position in society, like anything else, is not created once and for all, but, just as much as the power of an empire, is continually rebuilding itself by a sort of perpetual process of creation, which explains the apparent anomalies in social or political history in the course of half a century. The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day.”
― Marcel Proust, The Captive / The Fugitive

“Life is suffering, the Buddha said, by which he did not mean Every moment of life is unbearable but rather All happiness/rest/contentment is transient; all appearances of permanence are illusory.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“You point to something as having quality and the quality seems to go away.”
― Robert Prisig

“All the baubles offered by the material world fail to satisfy because they are themselves products of finitude and impermanent by nature.”
― Vanamali, The Complete Life of Krishna: Based on the Earliest Oral Traditions and the Sacred Scriptures

“Nothing is certain, even though the world is changing”
― Tim Arnold

“There are no sweeter words than this: nothing lasts forever.”
― Joey Comeau

“Can one instant of ecstasy redeem a life of despair? Maybe only an artist could live that kind of life. Can beauty exist in heaven where nothing ever changes, where nothing dies or grows old, where there’s no cycle of death and rebirth, no seasons of growth and decay? How can there be beauty when everything is beautiful? Maybe beauty, true beauty, exists only when it’s perishable, already containing the seeds of ugliness.”
― Mike Hockney, The Armageddon Conspiracy

“Every loss is a lesson in learning to stay detached. So, when you lose someone, or something, examine your grief. Yet, don't resist it; let it flow…grieve, shed a tear, but quickly wipe it away, move on, don't cling on to your sorrows! Go beyond the smokescreen of permanence. Remember: nothing is permanent, not even your own Life!”
― AVIS Viswanathan

“Where does my next thought come from?
Hold your next thought as long as you can,
Try it.
It’s like holding water in your hands.
Like holding fog.
Allusory.
A new one springs up
From the nowhere
And dissipates as quickly.”
― Eric Overby, Legacy

“We are so consumed with wanting this or that or are wanting to solve our problems, that we fail to see Life’s impermanence. Most of the time, we are not living, we are merely existing; cowering in fear and insecurity. We are not present in the now. The now is the ultimate, and only, reality. Unless we are celebrating Life in the present, unless we are living fully with what is, we will never be happy!”
― AVIS Viswanathan

“Let the Waves of Life
Ebb & Flow.
Let Everything Come & Go.”
― Ujjwal Arora, Affirmations: a daily handbook

“Watching indelible ink (what they use to denote you voted during elections in India) fade/peel off from your finger, albeit slowly, is fascinating. It is a gentle reminder that everything is, after all, impermanent. Nothing lasts forever!”
― AVIS Viswanathan

“Nonetheless, its future is known, much as one might wish to ignore it: the photo will live briefly in somebody's memory, and then become dormant once again—that is, in no one's active memory—and after that it will hibernate in some electronic corner of the world for a long time before disappearing for good. In the other photo, which I took so as to capture the entire building from the ground up, you can make out, on the eave or cornice above the doorframe, several patches of peeling paint.”
― Sergio Chejfec, My Two Worlds

“Spirituality teaches you to be fearless. When you realize that everything that you are trying to cling on to or protect, including your own Life, will eventually be gone, will be taken away, you turn fearless!”
― AVIS Viswanathan

“Practicing Mindfulness not only keeps us awake but also keeps us aware of the impermanence of life; therefore, we have a greater appreciation of it. We care. Life matters. The moments of our lives matter. We don’t want to waste them. Not a single one.”
― Ora Nadrich, Mindfulness and Mysticism: Connecting Present Moment Awareness with Higher States of Consciousness

“I told myself that I was used to impermanence, that attachments would get me exactly nowhere, but then some people stay with you in ways you don't expect and you try to shake them out, shake them away, but your memory won't let you.”
― Laura van den Berg, Find Me