Transitory Quotes - Page 6

• History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Historical, Essentials, Human Nature

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.66, Editions Le Mono

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• You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage. Imagine how happy I felt when I got relief from bladder pressure. How long did that happiness last?

  Frederick Salomon Perls

  Happiness, Long, Relief

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• Christ wishes to raise men up to heaven, and has given them all the means to attain this; whilst the Devil, who himself for his pride was cast down from heaven into the dominions of the air, wishes by every means to attach men to earthly,- sensual, transitory things, and, in order to attain this end, he employs the most powerful, most prodigious means.

  John of Kronstadt

  Powerful, Mean, Pride

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• The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few general relations, called laws. To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Art, Science, Law

  Alfred North Whitehead (1939). “An introduction to mathematics”

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• Taoism shows us how to deal with life and death by realizing everything here is transitory but its substance is eternal.

  Frederick Lenz

  Life And Death, Taoism, Substance

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• The sequoias belong to the silences of the milleniums. Many of them have seen a hundred human generations rise, give off their little clamors and perish. They seem indeed to be forms of immortality standing here amoing the transitory shapes of time.

  Edwin Markham

  Giving, Silence, Generations

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• It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Pain, Animal, Agony

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.29, Publishdrive

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• The transitoriness of our existence in now way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Doe, Way, Realizing

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.120, Beacon Press

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• A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Passion, Perfection, Peaceful

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1993). “Frankenstein”, p.44, Wordsworth Editions

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• When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.

  Bertrand Russell

  Age, Able, Should

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• All that is transitory is but a metaphor.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Metaphor

  "Faust, Part 2". Book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Act 5, 1832.

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• He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Heart, Blood, One Day

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.416, Diversion Books

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• Let me tell you something - being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory.

  Halle Berry

  Beautiful, Heartache, Trouble

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• Physical beauty is passing - a transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all these things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years!

  Tennessee Williams

  Taken, Heart, Years

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• Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Art, Believe, Space

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

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• why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.

  George Santayana

  Together, Absurd

  George Santayana, William G. Holzberger (2002). “The Letters of George Santayana”, p.319, MIT Press

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• For although we know that the years pass, that youth gives way to old age, that fortunes and thrones crumble (even the most solid among them) and that fame is transitory, the manner in which—by means of a sort of snapshot—we take cognisance of this moving universe whirled along by Time, has the contrary effect of immobilising it.

  Marcel Proust

  Moving, Mean, Years

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.402, Modern Library

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• He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another.

  Hermann Hesse

  Time, Faces, Saws

  Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.112, Om Books International

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• Romantic poses aside, let us recognize that "falling in love"...is an inferior state of mind, a form of transitory imbecility.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Falling In Love, Love Is, Mind

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• The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within...could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the result; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline; and the most glorious poetry that has been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Inspiration, Greatness, Wind

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• Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment help us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments — but all of this is transitory it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dream, Disappointment, Taken

  FaceBook post by Paulo Coelho from Oct 22, 2016

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• One who has loved truly, can never lose entirely. Love is whimsical and temperamental. Its nature is ephemeral, and transitory. It comes when it pleases,and goes away without warning. Accept and enjoy it while it remains, but spend no time worrying about its departure. Worry will never bring it back.

  Napoleon Hill

  Love Is, Worry, Warning

  Napoleon Hill, Wallace D. Wattles (2012). “Get Rich Collection”, p.142, Penguin

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• The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own traveling brotherhood.

  Freya Stark

  Life, Change, Art

  Freya Stark (2013). “Perseus In The Wind: A Life of Travel”, p.110, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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• I want to define success by redefining it. For me it isn't that solely mythical definition - glamour, allure, power of wealth, and the privilege from care. Any definition of success should be personal because it's so transitory. It's about shaping my own destiny.

  Anita Roddick

  Success, Destiny, Care

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• Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he or she is in. That person must reflect what is projected upon him or her.

  Frank Herbert

  Greatness, Imagination, Feelings

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