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Transience Quotes

Browse 97 quotes about Transience.

Transience Quotes

“I think now that maybe true sweetness can only happen in limbo. I don't know why. Is it because we are so unsure, so tentative and waiting? Like it needs that much room, that much space to expand. The not knowing anything really, the hoping, the aching transience: This is not real, not really, and so we let it alone, let it unfold lightly. Those times that can fly.”

ThinkingKnowsNeedsRealHappensWaitingSpaceRoomsKnowingBeing TrueNot KnowingSweetnessUnsureTransienceLimbo
Book:The Dog Stars
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“Buddhist nirvana ... is based on egolessness and is not anthropocentric but rather cosmological. In Buddhism, humans and the things of the universe are equally subject to change, equally subject to transitoriness or transmigration. A person cannot achieve emancipation from the cycle of birth and death until he or she can eliminate a more universal problem: the transience common to all things in the universe.”

HumansPersonsProblemUniverseCommonAchieveSubjectsBuddhismBirthAll ThingsUniversalBuddhistCyclesEmancipationBirth And DeathTransience
Book:Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue: Part one of a two-volume sequel to Zen and Western Thought
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“Vividly imagined, beautifully written, at times almost unbearably suspenseful-the stories in Kristiana Kahakauwila's debut collection, This Is Paradise, are boldly inventive in their exploration of the tenuous nature of human relations. These are poignant stories of 'paradise'-Hawai'i-with all that 'paradise' entails of the transience of sensuous beauty.”

HumansStoriesWrittenRelationParadiseCollectionsExplorationHuman RelationsPoignantDebutSensuousTransience
Author:Joyce Carol Oates
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“If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise; you don't die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.”

IfsPainDiesBornWho You AreSurpriseForgottenGhostUnbelievableDissolutionTransienceAfraid Of Death
Book:The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
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“In my old age, I have come to believe that love is not a noun but a verb. An action. Like water, it flows to its own current. If you were to corner it in a dam, true love is so bountiful it would flow over. Even in separation, even in death, it moves and changes. It lives within memory, in the haunting of a touch, the transience of a smell, or the nuance of a sigh. It seeks to leave a trace like a fossil in the sand, a leaf burning into baking asphalt.”

IfsBelieveAgeActionMovingWaterMemoriesLove IsFlowCurrentsCornersSmellSeparationOld AgeBurningSandLeafsSighFossilsHauntingBakingVerbsNuanceNounsTrue Love IsDamsTransienceAsphalt
Author:Alyson Richman
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“Everything here below beneath the sun is subject to continual change; and perhaps there is nothing which can be called more inconstant than opinion, which turns round in an everlasting circle like the wheel of fortune. He who reaps praise today is overwhelmed with biting censure tomorrow; today we trample under foot the man who tomorrow will be raised far above us.”

MenTodayTurnsOpinionSunFeetSubjectsHe ManTomorrowPraiseFortuneRaisedRoundsCirclesWheelsOverwhelmedEverlastingReapCensureBitingTransienceWheel Of Fortune
Book:The Best Tales of Hoffmann
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“With movement, families get split. With the politicization of religion, spirituality gets diluted. With people intermarrying and falling in love outside of pre-existing defined groups, the tribe is disappearing. I'm not in favor of going back to those things, but you can't take those things away without putting something new in its place. So finding a way to make transience more acceptable, even beautiful is key.”

PeopleWayBeautifulFallSpiritualityGroupsMovementKeysFindingsFalling In LoveDisappearFavorsDefinedSomething NewAcceptableSplitsTribesTransience
Author:Mohsin Hamid
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“In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter.”

WorldWayArtMatterRealityFormLyingFictionSubjectsHorrorEssentialsCreatingPerfectionBetrayalWorks Of ArtRebelNew WorldCelebrationInfidelityAffirmationUglinessGreat WorkDefianceSubject MatterGrimRetellingTake ControlTransienceTehranInsubordination
Author:Azar Nafisi
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“Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature.”

WantNeedsTryingArtStatesLightEarthEnergyGrowsProcessUnderstandingGrowthMovementMaterialsSourceKeysSeasonsResistanceWeatherSensitiveShockDecayImplicitTransience
Author:Andy Goldsworthy
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“When we are fully mindful of the transience of things - an impending return home from an overseas adventure, a graduation, our child boarding the school bus for the first day of kindergarten, a close colleague changing jobs, a move to a new city - we are more likely to appreciate [be grateful for] and savor the remaining time that we do have. Although bittersweet experiences also make us sad, it is this sadness that prompts us, instead of taking it for granted, to come to appreciate the positive aspects of our vacation, colleague, or hometown; it's 'now or never.'”

FirstsChildrenHomeSchoolJobsMovingCitiesSadnessAdventureReturnGratitudeAspectAppreciateOur ChildrenGratefulGrantedBusVacationBe GratefulColleaguesHometownBittersweetPromptsKindergartenTransienceNow Or NeverSchool BusChanging Jobs
Author:Sonja Lyubomirsky
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“Somehow this literary genre, which most people condemned, acted as a sort of counterbalance to Charles's soul; it was the ballast that prevented him from lurching into the serious or melancholy, unlike Andrew, who had been unable to adopt his cousin's casual attitude to life, and to whom everything seemed so achingly profound, imbed with that absurd solemnity that the transience of of existence conferred upon even the smallest act.”

PeopleSoulExistenceAttitudeSeriousProfoundAbsurdGenreMelancholySmallestCousinCasualAndrewTransienceSolemnityBallastLiterary Genre
Author:Félix J. Palma
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“This superficial blurring has something to do with the incapacity I have just mentioned. I can make no statement about reality clearer than my own relationship to reality; and this has a great deal to do with imprecision, uncertainty, transience, incompleteness, or whatever. But this doesn't explain the pictures. At best it explains what led to their being painted.”

ArtI CanRealityMy OwnDealsTechniqueStatementsUncertaintySuperficialTransienceIncapacityIncompleteness
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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