Life Is Transient Quotes

I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient and can end very quickly, so don't postpone your dreams. ~ Abraham Verghese

Life is transient and ephemeral so dance in your own way. ~ Debasish Mridha

The world you experience, every day and night of your life, is transient. They only last for the blink of an eye, and then they dissolve back into that unknowable and formless eternity. ~ Frederick Lenz

Life is transient and death is unfathomable, but questions nonetheless abound. What is the driving purpose behind the prosodic life of an ordinary person such as me? What emotional rhythms, pitches, pauses, stresses, and intonations drive the meter of person's life? When the church bells toll my parting day, what tone will it strike in the hearts of other people, if any? Is there a person whoever traversed this crusty rock that we call planet Earth who did not wish for other people to remember them after their death? I confess sharing the vain longing of all men, however humble, to be remembered, not for the crimes that I committed but for fully expressing the poetic gift of life. When I ask what other people will think when I die, I must also ask why I lived, what did I live for, and what joy did I bring other people, if any. What acts, thoughts, and deeds make people beloved? What resounding chime resonates with all loving people? What magical filament binds us? What serves as the ethereal umbilical cord that causes all conscience stricken humans to crave the same universal sense of being? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Goodbye!" "Oh, not goodbye!" he protested. "I mean to know you better, Miss Lanyon of Undershaw!" "To be sure, it does seem a pity you should not, after such a promising start, but life, you know, is full of disappointments, and that, I must warn you, is likely to prove one of them. ~ Georgette Heyer

I decided that I was ready to assume this position when I discovered that the chance to save the country was very meager. I was prepared to sacrifice myself for this country and its 90 million people. They want food, fuel and electricity and yearn for a decent life. Any president who does not pay attention to such details or is unable to provide the minimum level of stability should leave office. ~ Abdel Fattah El-Sisi

Life is short and it mostly sucks so who cares what a nutritionist thinks? ~ Kristen Ashley

Several hundred men filled the main chamber. Women's voices could be heard from beyond the cloth screens running down the eastern wall. The gathering quieted for the service, which followed the same pattern as in Judea: a song and then a Scripture reading from the Torah scrolls, followed by a prayer from the Psalms. Some men departed to begin their day, but most remained. Jacob stayed where he was, repeating silently the Psalms that resonated with the emotions filling his heart. How precious, O God, is your constant love. You let us drink from the river of your goodness. You are the source of all life. ~ Davis Bunn

No," said Jacob, "I don't mean to say that this life is just a party, any kind of party. It is a wedding, the most important kind of party, full of joy, fear, hope, and ignorance. And at this party there are enough places and parts for everyone, and if no one can play every part, yet everyone can come to the party, everyone can come to the wedding feast, and anyone who does not know that he is at a wedding feast just does not see what is in front of him. He might as well be dead if he does not know that the world is a wedding. ~ Delmore Schwartz

I have walked much of my life in fear, never truly finding a place where I knew I belonged. Rejection, victimization, and divorce has left me like a beggar, seeking desperately to find my blessing somewhere, to find it anywhere. I didn't know who I was or where I was going. I didn't know how significant I was or what the meaning of my life was, and the saddest part of this is that I didn't fully realize that God was holding the blessing for me that I was so desperately seeking. ~ Tim Young

But no matter what the dictionary says, in my opinion, a problem derails your life and an inconvenience is not being able to get a nice seat on the un-derailed train. Given that, I've had three and a half problems. A dead guy in my bed, substance abuse, and manic-depression. ~ Carrie Fisher

The final result of all life is your awareness. Your awareness is existence. ~ Frederick Lenz

The solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

When you have self-love, you no longer live your life according to other people's opinions. You don't need other people to accept you or tell you how good you are, because you know what you are. With self-love, you aren't afraid to share your love because your heart is completely open. Today can be the day when you experience the beauty of yourself. Today can be the day when you reconnect with your own spirit and express all the love in your heart. Focus your attention on what you are feeling in this moment. Feel the desire to be alive, the desire for love and joy, the desire to create something wonderful to share with others. The biggest mission you have is to make yourself happy, and to share your love, your joy, and your happiness. ~ Miguel Ruiz

Living your life in the public eye is a greater burden than most people can imagine. ~ Justin Trudeau

Sarcasm is weird. Even not in acting, in life I feel like 'sarcastic' is a word that people use to describe me sometimes so when I meet someone, it's almost like they feel like they have to also be sarcastic, but it can sometimes just come off as mean if it's not used in the right way. ~ Aubrey Plaza

If your grip on coins of life is not strong enough than they will gradually slip away from your hands,for surely one day you will find that your hands are empty ~ Kiran

And then you came into my life, and you just blindsided me. I am so fucking wrapped up in you I can't see straight, and you tell me I'm a caveman for wanting to protect you and that our relationship is bullshit. ~ Kristen Proby

I'm really going off of watching John Waters speak one time and I remember he just kind of talked and it was totally interesting. I wanted to hear about his life and how he got started and when did he think he made it, stupid stuff like that. And what his relationship with the mainstream is because he's so far out there, but then he became part of the mainstream in this weird way. He was really funny, though. Yeah, I have to work on my jokes. ~ Kathleen Hanna

When you believe that you are not worthwhile in and of yourself, in the back of your mind you also begin to believe that life is not worthwhile in and of itself. It is only worthwhile insofar as it relates to your crusade. It is a kamikaze mission. ~ Marya Hornbacher

We all have the power to change the world ... It's just the person who is willing to do something about it who will. ~ Tanner Di Bella

When someone special walks into your life and is able to change things for the better, don't let them walk away. ~ Wiz Khalifa

Become aware of the silent witness that is observing the unfolding of all the external events of your life. This eternal presence is your true Self. ~ Deepak Chopra

The tragedy of life is not that a man loses but that he almost wins. ~ Heywood Hale Broun

Good friends, beware! the only life we know
Flies from us like an arrow from the bow,
The caravan of life is moving by,
Quick! to your places in the passing show. ~ Richard Le Gallienne

The world is never what it seems,
Leaves are red yet leaves are green,
What is water, ice or steam?
Is life real or a dream?
Beware; the world is never what it seems. ~ E.J. Norris

We do not converse. She visits me to talk. My task to murmur. She talks about her grandsons, her daughter who lives in Delphi, her sister or her husband - both gone - obscure friends - dead - obscurer aunts and uncles - lost - ancient neighbors, members of her church or of her clubs - passed or passing on; and in this way she brings the ends of her life together with a terrifying rush: she is a girl, a wife, a mother, widow, all at once. All at once - appalling - but I believe it; I wince in expectation of the clap. Her talk's a fence - shade drawn, window fastened, door that's locked - for no one dies taking tea in a kitchen; and as her years compress and begin to jumble, I really believe in the brevity of life; I sweat in my wonder; death is the dog down the street, the angry gander, bedroom spider, goblin who's come to get her; and it occurs to me that in my listening posture I'm the boy who suffered the winds of my grandfather with an exactly similar politeness, that I am, right now, all my ages, out in elbows, as angular as badly stacekd cards. Thus was I, when I loved you, every man I could be, youth and child - far from enough - and you, so strangely ambiguous a being, met me, h eart for spade, play after play, the whole run of our suits. ~ William H. Gass

In this world, this life, "flow" [the times when our work or play so absorbs and attunes our energies that we lose track of time] comes to an end. The canvas is dry, the fugue is complete, the band plays the tag one more time and then resolves on the final chord. And, too, the book is finished, the service is over, the lights go up in the darkened theater and we emerge blinking into the bright lights of the "real world." But what if the timeless, creative world we had glimpsed is really the real world -- and it is precisely its reality that gave it such power to captivate us for a while? What if our ultimate destiny is that moment of enjoyment and engagement we glimpse in the artist's studio? ~ Andy Crouch

I've always believed that we don't choose the life we want, we choose the life we think we deserve. We self-sabotage as a way to punish ourselves." "Why would we punish ourselves? Doesn't the world punish us enough?" "Why wouldn't we? We live in a world that is always making us work for love. It's cause and effect. ~ Richard Paul Evans

When people ask me what the most important thing is in life, I answer: 'Just breathe.' ~ Yoko Ono

You have the power to think whatever you choose to allow into your head. If something just "pops" into your head, you have the power to make it go away. You have the power to decide that a particular emotion is a "choice" rather than a condition of life. And you have the power, similarly, to choose beliefs that empower you, that bring out your best. ~ Art E. Berg

I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels. ~ Paul Theroux

Two Songs For The World's End

I
Bombs ripen on the leafless tree
under which the children play.
And there my darling all alone
dances in the spying day.

I gave her nerves to feel her pain,
I put her mortal beauty on.
I taught her love that hate might find,
its black work the easier done.

I sent her out alone to play;
and I must watch, and I must hear,
how underneath the leafless tree,
the children dance and sing with Fear.

II
Lighted by the rage of time
where the blind and dying weep,
in my shadow take your sleep,
though wakeful I.

Sleep unhearing while I pray -
Should the red tent of the sky
fall to fold your time away,
wake to weep before you die.

Die believing all is true
that love your maker said to you
Still believe
that had you lived you would have found
love, world, sight, sound,
sorrow, beauty - all true.
Grieve for death your moment - grieve.

The world, the lover you must take,
is the murderer you will meet.
But if you die before you wake
never think death sweet. ~ Judith A. Wright

War thoughts again. I think back to the business cards from that health shop earlier on. I think about miniature wars that individuals fight all the time. They fight against cellulite, or negative emotions, or addictions, or stress. I think about how we can now hire all different sorts of mercenaries to help us fight against ourselves…Therapists, manicurists, hairdressers, personal trainers, life coaches. But what's it all for? What do all these little wars achieve? Although it is a part of my life too, and I want to be thin and pretty and not laughed at in the street and not so stressed and mad that I start screaming on the tube, it suddenly seems a little bit ridiculous. All the time we do these things we are trying to enlist ourselves into a bigger war. We are trying to join up, constantly, with the enemy.
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Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald's and Disney and The Gap and L'Oreal and all the others try to do the same thing we all just say, 'OK'? Hitler needed marketing, that's all. His propaganda was, of course, brilliant for its time, everyone knows that. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hilter had bee able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? Why not? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving sof ~ Scarlett Thomas

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And ~ Leo Tolstoy

It is only in exceptional moods that we realize how wonderful are the commonest experiences of life. It seems to me sometimes that these experiences have an "inner" side, as well as the outer side we normally perceive. At such moments one suddenly sees everything with new eyes; one feels on the brink of some great revelation. It is as if we caught a glimpse of some incredibly beautiful world that lies silently about us all the time. ~ J. W. N. Sullivan

And do you want to marry him?"
"Maybe. I don't know."
"That kind of indifference usually means no."
"It's not indifference. I just haven't made up my mind."
"Either you want to marry him more than anything in the world, or you say no. It's very simple."
"It's not simple," Faye said. "Not at all. You don't understand."
"So explain it to me."
"Okay, here's what it's like. Imagine you're feeling desperately thirsty. Like insanely thirsty. All you can think about is a big tall glass of water. Got it?"
"Got it."
"And you fantasize about this big tall glass of water, and the fantasy is really vivid in your head, but it does not actually quench your thirst."
"Because you can't drink the imaginary glass of water."
"Right. So you look around and see this murky, oily puddle of water and mud. It's not exactly the tall glass of water but it does have the advantage of being wet. It's real, whereas the tall glass of water is not. And so you choose the oily mud puddle, even though it's not really what you'd prefer. ~ Nathan Hill

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well, that is, how to produce the least possible evil and the greatest goodness in one's life. At present, people study useless sciences, but forget to study this, the most important knowledge. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of mise ~ Karl Marx

God's supreme word to us is life; our highest worship of Him is love for the living. ~ Bjornstjerne Bjornson

It is one of the blessings of wilderness life that it shows us how few things we need in order to be perfectly happy. ~ Horace Kephart

Life in itself is so beautiful that to ask the question of the meaning of life is simply nonsense. ~ Rajneesh

My religion is searching for the truth in life and life in the truth, though knowing that I do not have to find it while I live; my religion is fighting incessantly and tirelessly with the unknown. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

My writing derived from the conviction I conceived during my college years: one should lead one's life as if one were the protagonist of an epic novel, with the outcome predetermined and chapter after chapter of edifying, traumatic, and exhilarating events to be suffered through. Since the end is known in advance, one must try to experience as much as possible in the brief time allotted. Writing is a way of ensuring that you pay enough attention along the way to understand what you see. ~ Jeffrey Tayler

It [Communism] is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man's relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.
It is the vision of man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man's liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man's destiny and reorganizing man's life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in his image, but because man's mind makes him the most intelligent of the animals. Copernicus and his successors displaced man as the central fact of the universe by proving that the earth was not the central star of the universe. Communism restores man to his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God. ~ Whittaker Chambers

The awareness of imagery is part of living ... a life which derives its power from within itself will focus on the perception ... of images. ~ Oskar Kokoschka

Without faith to act as a governor, the human mind is a runaway worry generator, a dynamo of negative expectations. And because your life is yours to shape as you wish with free will, if you entertain too much anxiety about too many things, if you place no trust in providence, what you fear will more often come to pass. We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable. ~ Dean Koontz