165 Quotes About Impermanence

As historian Albert L. Hurtado wrote, "War, pestilence, and famine blow books around the planet like so many hostages to uncertain fortune. Thieves steal, vandals deface, pious clergy burn, and worms eat books. Whether threatened by worms or war, there is nothing permanent about books and libraries.

On a certain day in the blue-moon month of SeptemberBeneath a young plum tree, quietlyI held her there, my quiet, pale belovedIn my arms just like a graceful dream.And over us in the beautiful summer skyThere was a cloud on which my gaze restedIt was very white and so immensely highAnd when I looked up, it had disappeared.

Everything changes. The leaves, the weather, the colour of your hair, the texture of your skin. The feelings you have today - whether they kill you or enthrall you - won’t be the same tomorrow, so let go. Celebrate. Enjoy. Nothing lasts, except your decision to celebrate everything, everyone, for the beauty that is there within each moment, each smile, each impermanent flicker of infinity.

Everything is impermanent. Every physical and mental experience arises and passes. Everything in existence is endlessly arising out of causes and conditions. We all create suffering for ourselves through our resistance, through our desire to have things different than the way they are - that is, our clinging or aversion.

One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.

Sometimes it takes a miracle to remind us that the only permanent condition is that of impermanence.

By identifying impermanence as a fundamental characteristic of existence itself, rather than a problem to be solved, the Buddhists are encouraging us to let go our hold on illusory solidity and learn to swim freely in the sea of change.

The lights became stars, which became streaks in the grayspace, and then networks of fading shimmers

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.