#permanence

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. ↗

— Rabindranath Tagore

#inspirational #inspirational

In that inevitable, excruciatingly human moment, we are offered a powerful choice. This choice is perhaps one of the most vitally important choices we will ever make, and it determines the course of our lives from that moment forward. The choice is this: Will we interpret this loss as so unjust, unfair, and devastating that we feel punished, angry, forever and fatally wounded-- or, as our heart, torn apart, bleeds its anguish of sheer, wordless grief, will we somehow feel this loss as an opportunity to become more tender, more open, more passionately alive, more grateful for what remains? ↗

— Wayne Muller

#on-loss #life

Bones are patient. Bones never tire nor do they run away. When you come upon a man who has been dead many years, his bones will still be lying there, in place, content, patiently waiting, but his flesh will have gotten up and left him. Water is like flesh. Water will not stand still. It is always off to somewhere else; restless, talkative, and curious. Even water in a covered jar will disappear in time. Flesh is water. Stones are like bones. Satisfied. Patient. Dependable. Tell me, then, Alobar, in order to achieve immortality, should you emulate water or stone? Should you trust your flesh or your bones? ↗

— Tom Robbins

#death #immortality #life #permanence #stones

The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#permanent #philosophy #men

...nothing wonderful lasted forever. Joy was as fleeting as a shooting star that crossed the evening sky, ready to blink out at any moment. ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#happiness #impermanence #joy #star #sky

I have no news of my coming or passing away-- the whole thing happened quicker than a breath; ask no questions of the moth. ↗

— فرید الدین عطار

#mayfly-and-pilgrim #zen #zen

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence. ↗

— Jean Paul

#brought #change #characters #gentle #ones

You swore you loved me, and laughed and warned me that you would not love me forever. I did not hear you. You were speaking in a language I did not understand. Never, never, I can conceive of a love which is able to foresee its own termination. Love is its own eternity. Love is in every moment of its being: all time. It is the only glimpse we are permitted of what eternity is. So I did not hear you. The words were nonsense. ↗

— Thornton Wilder

#love #permanence #love

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#impermanence #men

Love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow — beautiful while it’s there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#beauty