Impermanent Quotes

“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat.”

“Things, relationship, and ideas are so transparently impermanent, we are ever made unhappy by them...Things are impermanent, they wear out and are lost; relationship is constant friction and death awaits; ideas and beliefs have no stability, no permanency. We seek happiness in them and yet do not realize their impermanency. So sorrow becomes our constant companion and overcoming it our problem.”

“That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)”

“The bells of the Gion monastery in India echo with the warning that all things are impermanent. The blossoms of the sala trees teach us through their hues that what flourishes must fade. The proud do not prevail for long but vanish like a spring night’s dream. In time the mighty, too, succumb: all are dust before the wind.”

“Everything is impermanent. Every physical and mental experience arises and passes. Everything in existence is endlessly arising out of causes and conditions. We all create suffering for ourselves through our resistance, through our desire to have things different than the way they are - that is, our clinging or aversion.”

“Do not compromise yourself and put your goodness in the same impermanent category as whatever circumstance happening. Be the best you in every circumstance.”

“We are born into a realm of constant change. Everything is decaying. We are continually losing all that we come in contact with. Our tendency to get attached to impermanent experiences causes sorrow, lamentation and grief, because eventually we are separated from everything and everyone we love. Our lack of acceptance and understanding of this fact makes life unsatisfactory.”

“Without relying on any deities, mantras, or mandalas, without having to master the intricacies of any doctrine or philosophy, I vividly understood what it meant to be a fragile, impermanent creature in a fragile, impermanent world. The mindfulness sharpened my attention to everything that was going on within and around me. My body became a tingling, pulsing mass of sensations. At times when I sat outside I felt as though the breeze were blowing through me. The sheen of the grass was more brilliant, the rustling leaves were like a chorus in an endlessly unfolding symphony. At the same time there was a deep stillness and poise at the core of this vital awareness.”

“Each of us is impermanent wave of energy folded into the infinite cosmic order. Acknowledgement of the fundamental impermanence of ourselves unchains us from the strictures of living a terrestrial life stuck like a needle vacillating between the magnetic pull of endless desire and the terror of death. Once we achieve freedom from any craving and all desires and we are relieved of all titanic fears, we release ourselves from living in perpetual distress. Once we rid ourselves from any impulse to exist, we discover our true place in the universal order. The composition of our life filament is exactly right when we accept the notion of living and dying with equal stoicism.”