Quotes about Impermanence

Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can't—and, in fact, you're not supposed to—know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.

They live ill who expect to live always.

The end of all is death and man's life passeth away suddenly as a shadow.

You can't get out of life alive.

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

Life is a constant process of dying.

Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.

Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour; Improve each moment as it flies! Life's a short summer, man a flower; He dies — alas! how soon he dies!

Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value.

You cannot predict the future.

But would you believe it? I couldn't remember one word when I woke up this morning. And I'm afraid I'll never be able to think out another one as good. Somehow, things never are so good when they're thought out a second time. Have you ever noticed that?

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!