Impermanence Quotes

• It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.

  Nhat Hanh

  Suffering, Permanent

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2015). “The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation”, p.132, Harmony

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• Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Change, Enjoy It While It Lasts, Delight

  "The Razor's Edge". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1944.

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• By contemplating the impermanence of everything in the world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent. We will no longer sleepwalk through our life.

  William Braxton Irvine

  Life, Time, Lasts

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• Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.

  Nhat Hanh

  Thanks, Nothing Lasts Forever, Infinite Possibilities

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2000). “Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers”, p.20, Penguin

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• One day some people came to the master and asked: How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness or death? The master held up a glass and said: Someone gave me this glass; It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it - incredibly.

  Ajahn Chah

  Philosophy, Blow, Wind

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• Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.

  Pema Chodron

  Struggle, Buddhism, Reality

  Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.78, Shambhala Publications

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• Our lives are written in disappearing ink.

  Michelle Cliff

  Life, Ink, Disappear

  Michelle Cliff (1998). “The Store of a Million Items: Stories”, Mariner Books

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• To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.

  Pema Chodron

  Suffering, Noble

  Pema Chodron (2003). “Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion”, p.53, Shambhala Publications

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• There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death's pulses, death's heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Death, Letting Go, Dying

  FaceBook post by Sogyal Rinpoche from Jan 19, 2015

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

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Words Of Wisdom, Suffering

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• Life's impermanence, I realized, is what makes every single day so precious. It's what shapes our time here. It's what makes it so important than not a single moment be wasted.

  Wes Moore

  Single Mom, Important, Shapes

  Wes Moore (2010). “The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates”, p.133, Spiegel & Grau

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• 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

  Letting Go, Wise, Mean

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• the knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Fragrance

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2005). “In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

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• Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Fragrance

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• Impermanence is not something to be afraid of. It's the evolution, a never-ending horizon.

  Deepak Chopra

  Horizon, Evolution, Volatility

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• Breathe and you dwell in the here and now, breath and you see impermanence is life.

  Nhat Hanh

  Yoga, Breathe, Here And Now

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2008). “Breathe, You are Alive!: The Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing”, p.1, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• A ruin is not just something that happened long ago to someone else; its history is that of us all, the transience of power, of ideas, of all human endeavors.

  George Schaller

  Death, Long Ago, Ideas

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• Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

  Robert Frost

  Grief, Flower, Eden

  Betsy Melvin, Tom Melvin, Robert Frost (2000). “Robert Frost's New England”, p.29, UPNE

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• If we are not empty, we become a block of matter. We cannot breathe, we cannot think. To be empty means to be alive, to breathe in and to breathe out. We cannot be alive if we are not empty. Emptiness is impermanence, it is change. We should not complain about impermanence, because without impermanence, nothing is possible.

  Nhat Hanh

  Buddhist, Block, Mean

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2012). “Awakening of the Heart: Essential Buddhist Sutras and Commentaries”, p.421, Parallax Press

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• The notion is called wabi-sabi life, like the cherry blossom, it is beautiful because of its impermanence, not in spite of it, more exquisite for the inevitability of loss.

  Peggy Orenstein

  Beautiful, Loss, Cherries

  Peggy Orenstein (2008). “Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Rom”, p.126, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Death, Acceptance, Clouds

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1594, Library of Alexandria

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• If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life: worms, fungi, microorganisms of all kinds ... Given only the health of the soil, nothing that dies is dead for very long.

  Wendell Berry

  Life, Death, Long

  Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.70, Counterpoint

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• 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

  Daughter, Growing Up, Grandchildren

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2003). “No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life”, p.36, Penguin

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• Impermanence is the very essence of joy-the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet.

  Myrtle Reed

  Change, Sweet, Essence

  Myrtle Reed (1911). “Master of the Vineyard”, p.28, Library of Alexandria

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• In our instinctive attachments, our fear of change, and our wish for certainty and permanence, we may undercut the impermanence which is our greatest strength, our most fundamental identity. Without impermanence, there is no process. The nature of life is change. All hope is based on process.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Change, Attachment, Wish

  Rachel Naomi Remen (2006). “Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.162, Penguin

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