Ephemerality Quotes

All things are the same, familiar in enterprise, momentary in endurance, coarse in substance. All things now are as they were in the day of those whom we have buried.

All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.

You write your name in the snow Yet say nothing.

Consider how many do not even know your name, and how many will soon forget it, and how those who now praise you will presently blame you.

How very near us stand the two vast gulfs of time, the past and the future, in which all things disappear.

Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone - those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river; the "what" is in constant flux, the "why" has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us - a chasm whose depths we cannot see.

...small too even the longest fame thereafter, which is itself subject to a succession of little men who quickly die, and have no knowledge of themselves, let alone of those long dead.

All is ephemeral - fame and the famous as well.

In this flowing stream, then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight.

Snow endures but for a season, and joy comes with the morning.

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

Glory is like a circle in the water

After all, what does fame everlasting mean? Mere vanity.

Life is a stranger's sojourn, a night at an inn.