Quotes about transience

There was a time in the ancient world—a very long time—in which the central cultural problem must have seemed an inexhaustible outpouring of books. Where to put them all? How to organize them on the groaning shelves? How to hold the profusion of knowledge in one’s head? The loss of this plenitude would have been virtually inconceivable to anyone living in its midst. Then, not all at once but with the cumulative force of a mass extinction, the whole enterprise came to an end. What looked stable turned out to be fragile, and what had seemed for all time was only for the time being.

On the other side of anger at those who either peddled false visions of security or incited irrational fears of death, Lucretius offered a feeling of liberation and the power to stare down what had once seemed so menacing. What human beings can and should do, he wrote, is to conquer their fears, accept the fact that they themselves and all the things they encounter are transitory, and embrace the beauty and the pleasure of the world.

Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest. Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is life too. It is truth. But it will pass and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes.

“Nothing lasts,” he said, his voice guttural with age and remembered pain. “Neither knowledge, nor skill, nor family, nor the bond between master and student. In another thousand years I will be gone. And in time you both will pass as well, and this place will be dust. For all that we pride ourselves on our power and our length of years, Prince Kai, ultimately dragons too are as fleeting as fireflies. There was a time when we never existed; there will also come a time when nobody will remember us. War changes to peace. But, ultimately, peace collapses into war and the cycle continues.”

“I’ve told you before, sir, you will be remembered as long as my fathers kingdom lasts.” Shan Yuan spoke with affection, clearly repeating an old reassurance.

“That’s not as reassuring as you might think.”

Walking through a library—any library—as they made their way to the exterior had its usual comforting, balancing effect on Irene. It was a reassurance that such places existed and that they would continue, even if she herself was as temporary as any other human.

The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last — that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.

Impermanence becomes vivid in the present moment; so do compassion and wonder and courage. And so does fear.

Something moves in the affectless brown depths of the boy's eyes. The watch is very old, purchased from a specialist dealer in a fortified arcade in Singapore. It is military ordnance. It speaks to the man of battles fought in another day. It reminds him that every battle will one day be as obscure, and that only the moment matters, matters absolutely.

A butterfly came fluttering along and landed on the shoulder of her blue work shirt. It was a small, white butterfly with a few crimson spots on its wings. The butterfly seemed to know no fear as it went to sleep on her shoulder.

“I’m sure you’ve never seen this kind of butterfly,” the dowager said, glancing toward her own shoulder. Her voice betrayed a touch of pride. “Even down in Okinawa, you’d have trouble finding one of these. It gets its nourishment from only one type of flower – a special flower that only grows in the mountains of Okinawa. You have to bring the flower here and grow it first if you want to keep this butterfly in Tokyo. It’s a lot of trouble. Not to mention the expense.”

“It seems to be very comfortable with you.”

“This little person thinks of me as a friend.”

“Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?”

“It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite naturally.”

“Do you give them names?” Aomame asked, curious. “Like dogs or cats?”

The dowager gave her head a little shake. “No, I don’t give them names, but I can tell one from another by their shapes and patterns. And besides, there wouldn’t be much point in giving them names: they die so quickly. These people are your nameless friends for just a little while. I come here every day, say hello to the butterflies, and talk about things with them. When the time comes, though, they just quietly go off and disappear. I’m sure it means they’ve died, but I can never find their bodies. They don’t leave any trace behind. It’s as if they’ve been absorbed by the air. They’re dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they come out of nowhere, search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness again, perhaps to some other world.”

Do you remember the moment you first realize you were mortal? That no matter what happened, you would never live long enough to read every book you wanted to read? That you’d die having accomplished only a fraction of your goals?

'In the end, defeat, and the cold, must come. First to the system, then the galaxy, then the universe, and the rest will be silence. Not to admit that is a foolish vanity.' She paused. 'Yet one grows flowers because they are lovely - not because one wishes them to live for ever.'

Every one of us has already experienced thousands of last times without even realizing it. Most of the time, in fact, you never even imagine that what you're experiencing is the last time.