top of page
"Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Impermanence quotes

"We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,The path of its departure still is free.Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but Mutability!"

"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."

"The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was."

"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."

"Even as I hold youI think of you as someone gonefar, far away. Your eyes the colorof pennies in a bowl of dark honeybringing sweet light to someone elseyour black hair slipping through my fingersis the flash of your head goingaround a corneryour smile, breaking before me,the flippant last turnof a revolving door,emptying you out, changed,away from me.Even as I hold youI am letting go."

"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!"

"All things fade into the storied past, and in a little while are shrouded in oblivion."

"Sometimes it takes a miracle to remind us that the only permanent condition is that of impermanence."

"I know there's no such thing as forever. So what can we be, in the now?"

"Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes."
Explore more quotes by Chuck Palahniuk

"Everybody looks a little crazy if you're looking close enough and if you can't look that close, then you don't really love them."

"No one wants to admit we're addicted to music. That's just not possible. No one's addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it, more channels, a larger screen, more volume. We can't bear to be without it, but no, nobody's addicted. We could turn it off anytime we wanted. I fit a window frame into a brick wall. With a little brush, the size for fingernail polish, I glue it. The window is the size of a fingernail. The glue smells like hair spray. The smell tastes like oranges and gasoline."

"In a way, being an addict is very proactive. A good addiction takes the guesswork out of death. There is such a thing as planning your getaway."

"How miserably hypocritical, you might say, but no sooner am I offered a chance to flee Hell than I yearn to stay. Few families hold their relations as closely as do prisons. Few marriages sustain the high level of passion that exists between criminals and those who seek to bring them to justice. It's no wonder the Zodiac Killer flirted so relentlessly with the police. Or that Jack the Ripper courted and baited detectives with his - or her - coy letters. We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired."

"I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about."
bottom of page