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"When you're young you do think that things last forever unfortunately they don't Lyra."
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Exlpore more Impermanence quotes
"A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind. It was now deep autumn in the mountains."
"She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show Life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, 'All are shadows!-all are passing!-all is past!"
"Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart."
"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."
"The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last-that they don't disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security."
"Those who are made can be unmade."
"We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all."
"I know there's no such thing as forever. So what can we be, in the now?"
"Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life-a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple-the painter is giving you a secret message. He's telling you that living things don't last-it's all temporary. Death in life. That's why they're called natures mortes. Maybe you don't see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer-there it is."
"If there were a sympathy in choice,War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,Making it momentary as a sound,Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,Brief as the lightning in the collied nightThat, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'The jaws of darkness do devour it up;So quick bright things come to confusion."
Explore more quotes by Philip Pullman
"If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day."
"One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen."
"He let her do it, then looked around for his fingers. There they were, curled like a bloody quotation mark on the lead. He laughed."
"When you stopped believing in God,' he went on, 'did you stop believing in good and evil?''No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels."
"Seems to me-' Lee said, feeling for the words, 'seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed...."
"When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again."
"We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of Libraries it opens, not the number it closes down."
"You going to be a scientist when you grow up? That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got."
"Who are you?' the woman said at last.'Lyra Silver-''No, where d'you come from? What are you? How do you know things like this?' Wearily Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand."
"I can't bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel, she continued. 'Sooner anything than that. I used to think pain would be worse-to be tortured forever-I thought that must be worse . . . But as long as you were conscious, it would be better, wouldn't it? Better than feeling nothing, just going into the dark, everything going out forever and ever?"
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