#Permanence Quotes

“But shall we wear these glories for a day? Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?”

“The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.”

“In the country, without any interference from the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families.”

“Earth endures; Stars abide.”

“Settlements may be temporary, but the action of the nations in the interest of peace and justice must be permanent. We can set up permanent processes. We may not be able to set up permanent decisions.”

“only an aching heartConceives a changeless work of art.”

“There is a coherence in things, a stability; something... is immune from change and shines out... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby.”

“A house is built of logs and stone, of tiles and posts and piers; a home is built of loving deeds that stand a thousand years.”

“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”

“Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.”

“The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how] to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting.”

“The seen is the changing, the unseen is the unchanging.”

“The vanishing, volatile froth of the present which any shadow will alter, any thought blow away, any event annihilate, is every moment converted into the adamantine.”

“You, of course, are a rose-- But were always a rose.”

“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. . . . Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.”

“Truth, which is permanent, eludes the historian of events. Truth transcends history.”

“Excellence is the new forever.”

“Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm.”

“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”

“Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.”

“Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.”

“While all other things are uncertain, evanescent, and ephemeral, virtue alone is fixed with deep roots; it can neither be overthrown by any violence or moved from its place.”

“Beauty vanishes; virtue is lasting.”

“The world remains ever the same.”

“What is once well done is done forever.”

“My attitude is tattooed that means it's permanent”

“The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.”

“The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure.”

“Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.”

“Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.”

“The only thing permanent is change.”

“All things flow, nothing abides. You cannot step into the same river twice, for the waters are continually flowing on. Nothing is permanent except change.”

“There were times when the fact of impending death seemed as palpable as the bed they lay on, and they would cling together with a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five minutes of striking. But there were also times when they had the illusion not only of safety but of permanence.”

“Jealously is always born with love but it does not die with it.”

“What happens to you here is forever.”

“Everything passes, only truth remains.”

“I suppose if a man has something once, always something of it remains.”

“The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.”

“Nothing is permanent but change.”

“The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with red upon it that the sun had never give, and would never take away.”

“All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.”

“Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.”

“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.”

“If things are real, they're there all the time.”

“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”

“We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.”