Momentary Quotes

• Beauty is momentary in the mind -- The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Beauty, Mind

  Harmonium (1923) "Peter Quince at the Clavier" pt. 4

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• …Perhaps this momentary life of ours is only the light that divides our infinite origin from our infinite end.

  Juan Ramon Jimenez

  Light, Infinite, Ends

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• Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

  Horace

  Anger, Passion, Madness

  "Epistles". Book by Horace, Book I, epistle ii, line 62, c. 20 BC.

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• Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains...

  Diane Ackerman

  Summer, Nature, Memories

  "A Natural History of the Senses". Book by Diane Ackerman, 1990.

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• When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man's life.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Life, Art, Anger

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• A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

  Robert Frost

  Inspiration, Poetry, Delight

  Collected Poems preface (1939)

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• Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.

  Kingsley Amis

  Love, Sex, Letting You Go

  Kingsley Amis (2016). “Collected Poems: 1944-1979”, p.68, New York Review of Books

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• Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat for it is momentary.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  War, Sunset, Victory And Defeat

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Collected Works”

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• My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instincts, but in a disciplined way.

  Roman Polanski

  Expression, Desire, Way

  "The Everything Cryptograms Book". Book by Nikki Katz, 2005.

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• Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

  John Keats

  Men, Criticism, Blame

  John Keats (2015). “John Keats - The Man Behind The Lyrics: Life, letters, and literary remains: Complete Letters and Two Extensive Biographies of one of the most beloved English Romantic poets”, p.225, e-artnow

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• Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Witty, Sex, Ridiculous

  Attributed in W. Somerset Maugham, Christmas Holiday (1939)

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• . . . women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.

  Judith Martin

  Boys, Female, Lapses

  Judith Martin (1996). “Common courtesy: in which Miss Manners solves the problem that baffled Mr. Jefferson”

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• A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.

  George Eliot

  Fall, Dark, Men

  George Eliot (2006). “Silas Marner: Literary Touchstone Edition”, p.47, Prestwick House Inc

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• We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you breathless.

  Alan Watts

  Time, Past, Thinking

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• Art is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement.

  John Galsworthy

  Art, Real, Men

  John Galsworthy (2008). “The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition”, p.338, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• I take it that a monograph of this sort belongs to the ephemera literature of science. The studied care which is warranted in the treatment of the more slowly moving branches of science would be out of place here. Rather with the pen of a journalist we must attempt to record a momentary phase of current thought, which may at any instant change with kaleidoscopic abruptness.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Moving, Science, Thinking

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• Photography is a response that has to do with the momentary recognition of things. Suddenly you're alive. A minute later there was nothing there. I just watched it evaporate. You look one moment and there's everything, next moment it's gone. Photography is very philosophical.

  Joel Meyerowitz

  Photography, Philosophical, Looks

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• The creative element in the mind of man . . . emerges in as mysterious a fashion as those elementary particles which leap into momentary existence in great cyclotrons, only to vanish again like infinitesimal ghosts.

  Loren Eiseley

  Fashion, Men, Creative

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• All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Self, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.90, Рипол Классик

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• What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Humility, Reflection, Order

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• Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was - only is.

  William Faulkner

  Time, People, Individual

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• Ask him why there are hypocrites in the world.' 'Because it is hard to bear the happiness of others.' 'When are we happy?' 'When we desire nothing and realize that possession is only momentary, and so are forever playing.' 'What is regret?' 'To realize that one has spent one's life worrying about the future.' 'What is sorrow?' 'To long for the past.' 'What is the highest pleasure?' 'To hear a good story.

  Vikram Chandra

  Regret, Hypocrite, Past

  Vikram Chandra (2011). “Red Earth and Pouring Rain”, p.365, Faber & Faber

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• Everybody thinks I'm this delicate little girl. But you can't tell a book by it's cover.' To which she added a momentary smile.

  Haruki Murakami

  Girl, Book, Thinking

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “Norwegian Wood”, p.24, Random House

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• A Moment's Halt-a momentary taste
  Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste-
  And, Lo! the phantom Caravan has reach'd
  The NOTHING it set out from. Oh, make haste!

  Omar Khayyam

  Life, Taste, Waste

  Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald, Christopher Decker (1997). “Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Critical Edition”, p.167, University of Virginia Press

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• The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

  Carl Sagan

  Humility, Thinking, Compassion

  Carl Sagan (1994). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, Random House Incorporated

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