Impermanent Quotes & Sayings

The assumption that humans exist within an essentially impermanent universe, taken as an operational precept, demands that the intellect become a totally aware balancing instrument. — Frank Herbert

Brain Juice was a recipe invented by Eve years before, when she had had to stay awake all day to look after Caddy and Indigo and Saffron, and all night to take care of the fragile and impermanent baby Rose. It was Coca-Cola with a great deal of instant coffee stirred into it. It was black and frothy and gritty, and it tasted like a primitive, medieval poison, but it banished sleep like magic. — Hilary McKay

Life is so impermanent that it's not about somebody else or things around me, it's about knowing you are completely alone in this world and being content inside. — K.d. Lang

Everything is so fleeting and impermanent. It's enough to drive you bat shit crazy. — Shane Kuhn

In Jung's terms-that we noted previously-the work is the artist's own transference projection, and he knows that consciously and critically. Whatever he does he is stuck with himself, can't get securely outside and beyond himself. He is also stuck with the work of art itself. Like any material achievement it is visible, earthly, impermanent. No matter how great it is, it still pales in some ways next to the transcending majesty of nature; and so it is ambiguous, hardly a solid immortality symbol. In his greatest genius man is still mocked. No matter that historically art and psychosis have had such an intimate relationship, that the road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there. The artist and the madman are trapped by their own fabrications; they wallow in their own anality, in their protest that they really are something special in creation. — Ernest Becker

Consciousness is an emergent, contingent, and impermanent phenomenon. It has no magical capacity to break free from the field of events out of which it springs. — Stephen Batchelor

And there in front of her was Julian, his eyes and ears closed to anything but Livvy, her body cradled against his. She seemed a drift of fragile ash or snow, something impermanent that had blown into his arms accidentally: the petal of a faerie flower, the white feather of an angel's wing. The dream of a little girl, the memory of a sister reaching up her arms: Julian, Julian, carry me. — Cassandra Clare

That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything - every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate - is always changing, moment to moment. We don't have to be mystics or physicists to know this. Yet at the level of personal experience, we resist this basic fact. It means that life isn't always going to go our way. It means there's loss as well as gain. — Pema Chodron

Why do we experience beauty as transcendent yet somehow impermanent and corrupted, and suffering as somehow wrong, rather than simply a part of the natural order? — David Skeel

Because sometimes people expect more, they expect their desires to be met, they fancy a future built on the pillars of their faith. But love is weak and impermanent and thus when the time comes, the pillars begin to crumble.
Then again that doesn't mean they can't be built again. They can, they surely can, when the times are favorable and the state of affairs, sound. — Chirag Tulsiani

Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent ... this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering. — Alan Watts

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them. In fact, real peace and joy are only possible when we see clearly into the nature of impermanence. — Thich Nhat Hanh

O Brahmana, it is just like a mountain river, flowing far and swift, taking everything along with it; there is no moment, no instant, no second when it stops flowing, but goes on flowing and continuing. So Brahmana, is human life, like a mountain river." As Buddha told Ratthpala : "The world is a continuous flux and is impermanent. — Walpola Ruhula

Existence is governed by its own law. Here, the things impermanent by nature
are bound to meet their end. Hence, with the passage of time, not only Ravana's
Lanka but "Krishna's" Dwarka also sinks. — Deep Trivedi

[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, the impermanent rather than the eternal and the simple rather than the ornate. The reason owes nothing to climate or genetics, added Keene, but is the result of the actions of writers, painters and theorists, who had actively shaped the sense of beauty of their nation.
Contrary to the Romantic belief that we each settle naturally on a fitting idea of beauty, it seems that our visual and emotional faculties in fact need constant external guidance to help them decide what they should take note of and appreciate. 'Culture' is the word we have assigned to the force that assists us in identifying which of our many sensations we should focus on and apportion value to. — Alain De Botton

If things were not impermanent, life would not be possible. — Nhat Hanh

That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116) — Stephen Levine

A man's name, title, and rank are artificial and impermanent; they do nothing to reveal what he really is, even to himself. — Jean Giraudoux

Advanced Courses [in Scientology] are the most valuable service on the planet. Life insurance, houses, cars, stocks, bonds, college savings, all are transitory and impermanent ... There is nothing to compare with Advanced Courses. They are infinitely valuable and transcend time itself. — L. Ron Hubbard

When one's world was impermanent, difficult endeavors, like procuring justice or balancing the ecology, need never be attempted. One need only make contributions to the ascendant hierarchy, cast one's eyes heavenward with an awed and anticipatory expression, while continuing to behave as selfishly as one liked. When everything is going to go pop, one needn't bother to provide for or preserve for the grandchildren. — Sheri S. Tepper

The concept of nutriment depends (a) upon association and (a) upon impermanence and (c) upon hunger. Hunger, seeking for satisfaction, devours x, which is associated with y that gives it satisfaction; but the satisfaction given is impermanent and thereby renews the hunger. "I" hungering for satisfaction, devour (x) food (eye object, taste, smell, touch object), the contact of which is associated with (y) pleasant feeling that gives satisfaction; but the satisfaction given by pleasant feeling is impermanent and by changing renews the pain of hunger. — Nanamoli Thera

Nostalgia for people, cultures, everything. There's an ability to use these marks to note things that are erased, deleted. Traces are a species of history, of evidence. It's a way for the way the narrator to construct a semblance of self, even though all of this creates a deception, a way to think of one's traces as a real way to define oneself. The trace is fallible, impermanent. It's one of the motives I had in mind throughout the text. — Sergio Chejfec

Photographers are victims of paradox, tracking the impermanent to make it permanent. — Ray Metzker

The boat has become supreme isolation, chosen isolation, holding myself apart from the world, which I only dimly understand anyway. I can sit on the aft deck and never be surprised by anything again- no phone will ever ring, no one will knock that I haven't seen coming for a quarter mile. that I can go to sleep any night and wake up having broken loose- a failed knot, a line frayed, the anchor dragged- that I can drift out of sight of land makes a twisted sense, in line with my internal weather. When everything has proven tenuous one can either move toward permanence or toward impermanence. The boat's sublimely impermanent. Some mornings the fog's so thick that I exist only in a tight globe of clearing, beyond which is all foghorn and unknown. — Nick Flynn

The world seemed so perfect, so complete, and yet so impermanent that I nearly wept. — Anita Diamant

Impermanence and non-self are not negative. They are the doors that open to the true nature of reality. They are not the causes of our pain. It is our delusion that causes us to suffer. Regarding something that is impermanent as permanent, holding to something that is without self as having a self, we suffer. Impermanence is the same as non-self. Since phenomena are impermanent, they do not possess a permanent identity. Non-self is also emptiness. Emptiness of what? Empty of a permanent self. Non-self means also interbeing. Because everything is made of everything else, nothing can be by itself alone. Non-self is also interpenetration, because everything contains everything else. Non-self is also interdependence, because this is made of that. Each thing depends on all other things to be. That is interdependence. Nothing can be by itself alone. It has to inter-be with all other things. This is non-self. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The anitya doctrine is, again, not quite the simple assertion that the world is impermanent, but rather that the more one grasps at the world, the more it changes. — Alan Watts

The horrific fact that our lives and those of the people we love are impermanent and exquisitely fragile, that any of us can cease to exist without warning, that loving anyone, anywhere, at any time, leaves you infinitely vulnerable at every single moment. (20) — Keith Ablow

I want to make something that's fleeting and impermanent but so real and deep and loud. — Janet McNally

You will begin to see desire's impermanent nature, and you will also realize that you do not have to act on every thought or desire. You will learn that you can choose from the many possibilities of how to respond to desire when it arises, and you can discover a new kind of freedom, where you do not have to follow your desires, but can choose to behave in new ways in response to your desires. — Jack Kornfield

Don't cling to things because everything is impermanent. — Mitch Albom

Twitter is very impulsive and impermanent and you only have 140 characters. There is no greater 'Emperor' of Twitter than Stephen Fry. — David Tang

Our call to action is to be in the flow of life, accepting life as it is and as it comes. We must allow life to be life in all its impermanent grandeur. Nothing remains the same, and those who fight change, or are in denial of it, create chaos within their own lives and the lives of those they have influence over. — Alaric Hutchinson

NO MUD, NO LOTUS Both suffering and happiness are of an organic nature, which means they are both transitory; they are always changing. The flower, when it wilts, becomes the compost. The compost can help grow a flower again. Happiness is also organic and impermanent by nature. It can become suffering and suffering can become happiness again. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Clothing is viral, impermanent in a way that public art cannot be. So I like thinking of how corporate-created clothing can be seen as a form of public art. — Jim Drain

Despite the fact we give hurricanes names like Katrina and Rita, a hurricane isn't a self-contained unit. A hurricane is an impermanent, ever-changing phenomenon arising out of a particular set of interacting conditions - air pressure, ground temperature, humidity, wind and so on. The same applies to us: we aren't self-contained units either. Like weather patterns, we are also an impermanent, ever-changing phenomenon arising out of a particular set of interacting conditions. Without food, water, air and shelter, we'd be dead. Without our genes, family, friends, social history, and culture, wouldn't act or feel as we do. — Kristin Neff

The bells of the Gion monastery in India echo with the warning that all things are impermanent. The blossoms of the sala trees teach us through their hues that what flourishes must fade. The proud do not prevail for long but vanish like a spring night's dream. In time the mighty, too, succumb: all are dust before the wind. — Heike

How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it in granite, as if only this would do full honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence ...
p 259 — Rachel Naomi Remen

Understanding that everything is impermanent, that happiness is transformed into suffering, and that all phenomena are lacking reality in themselves and are only projections of our mind, will permit us to counteract the first hindrance to meditation, that is, our attachment to this world. — Bokar Rinpoche

Vintage books, old china, antiques; maybe I love old things so much because I feel impermanent myself. — Josh Lanyon

Death should teach you that what is real is life. And life teaches you that what is unavoidable is not death, but impermanence. Impermanence is the only truth. Nothing is permanent. All is changing. In every instant. In every moment. Were anything permanent, it could not be. For even the very concept of permanence depends upon impermanence to have any meaning. Therefore, even permanence is impermanent. Look at this deeply. Contemplate this truth. Comprehend it, and you comprehend God. This is the Dharma, and this is the Buddha. This is the Buddha Dharma. This is the teaching and the teacher. This is the lesson and the master. This is the object and the observer, rolled into one. They never have been other than One. It is you who have unrolled them, so that your life may unroll before you. — Neale Donald Walsch

I can't believe that we could be so impermanent — Nina LaCour

The building is as grey as the pavement below and the
sky above, appearing as impermanent as the clouds, as though it could vanish into the air without notice. Nondescript grey stone renders it indistinguishable from the surrounding buildings save for a tarnished sign hanging by the door. Even the headmistress inside is clad in a deep charcoal. Yet the man in the grey suit looks out of place. — Erin Morgenstern

Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness ... focusing the consciousness ... aortal dilation ... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness ... to be conscious by choice ... blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions ... one does not obtain food-safety freedom by instinct alone ... animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct ... the animal destroys and does not produce ... animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual ... the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe ... focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid ... bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs ... all things/cells/beings are impermanent ... strive for flow-permanence within ... — Frank Herbert

A more appropriate question to ask a Buddhist is simply, "What is life?" From our understanding of impermanence, the answer should be obvious: "Life is a big array of assembled phenomena, and thus life is impermanent." It is a constant shifting, a collection of transitory experiences. And although myriad life-forms exist, one thing we all have in common is that no living being wishes to suffer. We — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

One is a Buddhist if he or she accepts the following four truths: All compounded things are impermanent. All emotions are pain. All things have no inherent existence. Nirvana is beyond concepts. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Some people do not even want to look at a person when the person is alive, but when the person dies they write eloquent obituaries and make offerings of flowers. At that point the person has died and cannot really enjoy the fragrance of the flowers anymore. If we really understood and remembered that life was impermanent, we would do everything we could to make the other person happy right here and right now. — Thich Nhat Hanh

working against this natural law to hold on to the things that we cherish and run away from the things that we dislike. Both are impermanent and our conscious mind might even understand this virtue of transience (if conditioned to do so), but the unconscious mind continues to lead us with its inherently mischievous and restless ways, which are further fuelled by our self-created and magnified sense of ego.
In general, — Manish Chopra

Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition. — John Ashbery

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. — Noah Levine

It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with it's silence and immobility but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world- invulnerable because elusive. — Joseph Conrad

Human beings affix themselves to things that are of little or no importance. They affix themselves to the transitory, to things that are impermanent, and in doing so, they get all upset — Frederick Lenz

The secret of the enjoyment of pleasure is to know when to stop. Man doesn't learn this secret easily, but to shun pleasure altogether is cowardly avoidance of a difficult job. For we have to learn the art of enjoying things BECAUSE they are impermanent. — Alan Watts

We are often sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible ... If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman. Then your grandchildren would never manifest. — Nhat Hanh

The world is impermanent. [All things change. Knowing this helps you see the end of any difficulty and thereby have hope.] — Ramakrishna

Don't throw away your suffering. Touch your suffering. Face it directly, and your joy will become deeper. You know that suffering and joy are both impermanent. Learn the art of cultivating joy. Practice like this, and you come to the third turning of the Third Noble Truth, the "Realization" that suffering and happiness are not two. When you reach this stage, your joy is no longer fragile. It is true joy. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Ignorance is the failure to discriminate between the permanent and the impermanent, the pure and the impure, bliss and suffering, the Self and the non-Self. — Patanjali

The world is not impermanent if one lives there after knowing God. — Ramakrishna

We have one impermanent experience, and, unable to be at peace as it passes, we reach out and grab for another,
The Tibetan Buddhist tradition defines renunciation as accepting what comes into our lives and letting go of what leaves our lives. To renounce in this sense is to come to a state of simple being. — Sharon Salzberg

Life is impermanent and in the face of that impermanence, cavort! Look death in the eye, tell him you're as cute as a button, flash a little deviant guile his way, and tell him to go feast on somebody's else's sweet flesh. — Nancy Milford

For me, it's always a failure of the imagination. I have that anxiety that time is passing, that everything is ultimately fleeting and impermanent. I better take advantage of every single moment. — Jason Silva

The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realization. You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be failure. Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure. In this world, which is to say on the level of form, everybody "fails" sooner or later, of course, and every achievement eventually comes to naught. All forms are impermanent. — Eckhart Tolle

First, we must see that our negative actions arise due to prejudice and erroneous judgments. The discrimination that labels some as 'friends' and others as 'enemies' must be perceived as the root of our problems. We need to see that we label people and things in terms of our own desires, our own wishes. These wishes are transitory. The labeled objects are, themselves, impermanent. Such labeling is therefore very confused and false, yet it persists, and we continue to create suffering for ourselves. To avoid this, we need to develop equanimity for all beings suffering in samsara, tossed to and fro by their fleeting delusions, just like ourselves. — Zongtrul Losang Tsondru

There is the joy that is one's state of the being and there is the joy that is one's state of mind. The first is permanent and the second is impermanent. — Ian Gardner

Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself - educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society. — Doris Lessing

You do not suffer because things are impermanent. You suffer because things are impermanent and you think they are permanent. — Nhat Hanh

Nothing is more natural than grief, no emotion more common to our daily experience. It's an innate response to loss in a world where everything is impermanent. — Stephen Levine

379True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving a certain state of mind are limited, impermanent, and conditioned. Fascination with states lead only to bondage and dependency. True meditation is abidance as primordial awareness. — Adyashanti

The Buddhist explanation is that we feel this uneasiness because we're always trying to get ground under our feet and it never quite works. We're always looking for a permanent reference point, and it doesn't exist. Everything is impermanent. Everything is always changing - fluid, unfixed, and open. Nothing is pin-down-able the way we'd like it to be. This is not actually bad news, but we all seem to be programmed for denial. We have absolutely no tolerance for uncertainty. It seems that insecurity — Pema Chodron

The townspeople thrived from these impermanent relationships, which were in their own way pure: the exchange of money for goods, a pleasant farewell, the assurance that neither party would see the other again. After all, what are most relationships in life but exactly this, though stretched flabbily over years and generations? — Hanya Yanagihara

The trouble with us is that we try to find happiness where it does not exist, in transient, impermanent things; we try to find it in the gratification of desire; we seek it in animal pleasure. Happiness lives in giving, in doing, not in getting, in grasping. — Orison Swett Marden

If we can model the ability to embody nonfear and nonattachment, it is more precious than any money or material wealth. Fear spoils our lives and makes us miserable. We cling to objects and people, like a drowning person clings to any object that floats by. By practicing nonattachment and sharing this wisdom with others, we give the gift of nonfear. Everything is impermanent. This moment passes. The object of our craving walks away, but we can know happiness is always possible. Intoxicants — Thich Nhat Hanh

Everything is impermanent: happiness, sorrow, a great meal, a powerful empire, what we're feeling, the people around us, ourselves. — Sharon Salzberg

"All conditioned things are impermanent" - when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. — Gautama Buddha

Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects. — Wilhelm Wundt

Our feelings are formations, impermanent and without substance. We learn not to identify with ourselves with our feelings, not to consider them as a self, not to seek refuge in them, not to die because of them. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Things, relationship, and ideas are so transparently impermanent, we are ever made unhappy by them ... Things are impermanent, they wear out and are lost; relationship is constant friction and death awaits; ideas and beliefs have no stability, no permanency. We seek happiness in them and yet do not realize their impermanency. So sorrow becomes our constant companion and overcoming it our problem. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently. — Pema Chodron

Everything is impermanent, except the love of God. — Neem Karoli Baba

For me and my family personally, September 11 was a reminder that life is fleeting, impermanent, and uncertain. Therefore, we must make use of every moment and nurture it with affection, tenderness, beauty, creativity, and laughter. — Deepak Chopra

Nothing lasts forever. That's the tragedy and the miracle of existence - that everything is impermanent. Everything changes. All we can do is make the best of the time we have. And go down shooting, naturally. — Seanan McGuire

She didn't want anyone reading her impermanent thoughts after she had permanently left the planet. — Wendy Wunder

Before us the thick dark current runs. It talks up to us in a murmur become ceaseless and myriad, the yellow surface dimpled monstrously into fading swirls travelling along the surface for an instant, silent, impermanent and profoundly significant, as though just beneath the surface something huge and alive waked for a moment of lazy alertness out of and into light slumber again. — William Faulkner

Knowing all objects to be impermanent, let not their contact blind you, resolve again and again to be aware of the Self that is permanent. — Tirumalai Krishnamacharya

Briefly, this doctrine is that man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep for ever things which are essentially impermanent. Chief among these things is his own person, for this is his means of isolating himself from the rest of life, his castle into which he can retreat and from which he can assert himself against external forces. He believes that this fortified and isolated position is the best means of obtaining happiness; it enables him to fight against change, to strive to keep pleasing things for himself, to shut out suffering and to shape circumstances as he wills. In short, it is his means of resisting life. The — Alan W. Watts

We are born into a realm of constant change. Everything is decaying. We are continually losing all that we come in contact with. Our tendency to get attached to impermanent experiences causes sorrow, lamentation and grief, because eventually we are separated from everything and everyone we love. Our lack of acceptance and understanding of this fact makes life unsatisfactory. — Noah Levine

Real wisdom is recognizing and accepting that every experience is impermanent. With this insight you will not be overwhelmed by ups and downs. And when you are able to maintain an inner balance, you can choose to act in ways that will create happiness for you and for others. Living each moment happily with an equanimous mind, you will surely progress toward the ultimate goal of liberation from all suffering. — S. N. Goenka

Maybe it's because we innately know that everything is impermanent that we so desperately cling to it.
But cling we do.
We know that our youth vanishes that we and our loved one will die one day, that whatever we have accumulated can easily be taken away from us, that one day our skills might not be wanted, that a day may come when our love might not be reciprocated. But we go on clinging.
Everywhere we turn we are faced with impermanence. (..)
The more we cling - of course - the more pain we feel as things fade, disappear, die around us.
And sometimes the more we cling, the more these things happen. (..)
The key to being able to let go of all the stuff you're holding on to is knowing that you'll be okay if you don't have it.
And that's the truth.
You can survive with very little. And though the passing of people and things can be painful, you will survive. — John C. Parkin

A farmhouse has a way of feeling both timeless and impermanent without ever committing to either side. — John Darnielle

Life even at its tiniest molecule is impermanent, transient, unsure and fickle. We try to make it worthwhile not by adding value to it but by improving our social perception, seeking validation in our interactional circles. Life cannot be valued for in the end, rich or poor, smart or dumb, popular or hermit, we are nothing but dust, vapor, blurry memories that eventually are soon forgotten. — Crystal Evans

When death finally comes you will welcome it like an old friend, being aware of how dreamlike and impermanent the pheneomenal world really is. — Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

The heart does not derive pure pleasure from what is impermanent. — Said Nursi

Once we see that everything is impermanent and ungraspable and that we create a huge amount of suffering if we are attached to things staying the same, we realize that relaxing and letting go is a wiser way to live. Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way. — Jack Kornfield

The world is impermanent. One should constantly remember death. — Ramakrishna

All created things are impermanent. Strive diligently. — Gautama Buddha

There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent. Though moving, it is always still. When we try to catch it, it seems to run away, and yet it is always here and there is no escape from it. And when we turn around to find the self which knows this moment, we find that it has vanished like the past. — Alan W. Watts

We are identifying with what is passing so fear comes. We are trying to make steady and permanent what is by nature impermanent. — Mooji

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. — Vironika Tugaleva

Pain is inevitable, from this perspective, but suffering is an optional extra, resulting from our attachments, which represent our attempt to try to deny the unavoidable truth that everything is impermanent. — Oliver Burkeman

Renunciation Suzuki Roshi said, "Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, but accepting that they go away." Everything is impermanent; sooner or later everything goes away. Renunciation is a state of nonattachment, acceptance of this going away. Impermanence is, in fact, just another name for perfection. Leaves fall; debris and garbage accumulate; out of the debris come flowers, greenery, things that we think are lovely. Destruction is necessary. A good forest fire is necessary. The way we interfere with forest fires may not be a good thing. Without destruction, there could be no new life; and the wonder of life, the constant change, could not be. We must live and die. And this process is perfection itself. — Charlotte Joko Beck