Transient Quotes

• Knowledge of the soul is the only universal truth and the only wisdom - all other knowledge is transient.

  Plato

  Soul, Universal Truth, Universal

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• I think character is permanent, and issues are transient.

  James Stockdale

  Character, Thinking, Issues

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• Everything is transient. Everything is constantly changing. The only thing we have is now.

  Jessica Lange

  Change

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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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• A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Happiness, Lying, Home

  H.L. MENCKEN (1958). “PREJUDICES A SELECTION”

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• Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; Improve each moment as it flies!

  St. Jerome

  Catholic, Short Summer, Moments

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• We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.

  Deepak Chopra

  Love, Caring, Joy

  Deepak Chopra (2010). “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams”, p.76, Amber-Allen Publishing

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• God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Philosophical, Causes, Pantheism

  Baruch Spinoza (1981). “Ethics”, p.26, Commodius Vicus

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• Maybe I don't believe things myself, as well. Truth is such a transient thing...

  Tracey Emin

  Believe, Truth Is, Wells

  "Show and tell". Interview with Lynn Barber, www.theguardian.com. April 21, 2001.

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• We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That's a fact but one we fight.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Fighting, Long, Meditation

  Sharon Salzberg (2010). “Real Happiness - Enhanced Ebook Edition: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program”, p.82, Workman Publishing

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• To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.

  Arnold Bennett

  Creativity, Artist, Soul

  Arnold Bennett, Sir Newman Flower (1932). “Delenda est * BOD : staff use only”

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• But life is just a party, and parties weren't meant to last.

  Prince

  Life, Song, Party

  Song: 1999 The Hits Mix

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• It's only illusions that destroy us. It's illusions that convince us that we can't. It's the illusions of the transient that tell us that all this matters.

  Frederick Lenz

  Ignorance, Convince Us, Matter

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• Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Art, Fleeting, Half

  Charles Baudelaire (1981). “Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists”, p.403, CUP Archive

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• Anger is a transient hatred; or at least very like it.

  Robert South

  Anger, Hatred

  ROBERT SOUTH (1866). “SERMONS SEVERAL OCCASIONS”, p.33

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• 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

  Science, Psychology, Analysis

  Wilhelm Max Wundt (1904). “Principles of Physiological Psychology”

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• Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Thinking, Mirrors, Perspective

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Full House”, p.73, Harvard University Press

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• History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.

  Vladimir Putin

  Government, Human Rights, Provocative

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• Every world has dogs or their equivalent, creatures that thrive on companionship, creatures that are of a high order of intelligence although not the highest and that therefore is simple enough in their wants and needs to remain innocent. The combination of their innocence and their intelligence allows them to serve as a bridge bewtween what is transient and what is eternal, between the finate and the infinate.

  Dean Koontz

  Dog, Simple, Order

  Dean Koontz (2007). “One Door Away from Heaven: A Novel”, p.670, Bantam

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• Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Miracle, World, Admiration

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1845). “Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments”, p.55

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• Discriminate between the transient and the eternal. Learn to move from complete control to complete abandon.

  Frederick Lenz

  Moving, Buddhism, Abandon

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• Los Angeles is a very transient town. It's the only place I know where you can actually rent a dog.

  Rita Rudner

  Dog, Towns, Los Angeles

  Rita Rudner (1993). “Naked Beneath My Clothes: Tales of a Revealing Nature”, Penguin Group USA

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• And now the moment. Such a moment has a peculiar character. It is brief and temporal indeed, like every moment; it is transient as all moments are; it is past, like every moment in the next moment. And yet it is decisive, and filled with the eternal. Such a moment ought to have a distinctive name; let us call it the Fullness of Time.

  Zadie Smith

  Character, Past, Names

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• If you are truly wise, you love life very deeply. You love the things in your life, transient though they may be.

  Frederick Lenz

  Wise, Wisdom, Love Life

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• [...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...] There is no royal road to perfection.

  Frederick Douglass

  Heart, Opportunity, Perfection

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