Walter Pater Quotes

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

I am a romantic, in a literary way, by which I mean the Romantic poets, who thought just because a sensation is fleeting doesn't mean it isn't valuable. If the only criterion of value is whether something lasts, then the whole of human life is a waste of time.

Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.

Because beautiful things never last. Not roses nor snow… And not fireworks, either

By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone. . . But I will bend the light, pretend that it somehow lingered on

Impermanence is the very essence of joy-the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet.

I dreamed I was a single moment in a single day. A note struck and vanished. A sounding. A reckoning. Gone.

The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor, or the one red leaf the snow releases in March

How passionately we love everything that cannot last: the dazzling crystallory of winter, the spring in bloom, the fragile flight of butterflies, crimson sunsets, a kiss, and life.

I leave no trace of wings in the air, but I am glad I have had my flight.

A moment is all you can expect from perfection.

Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment.

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.

All things fade and quickly turn to myth.

How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?

A man, when he burns, leaves only a handful of ashes. No woman can hold him. The wind must blow him away.

I knew that it wouldn’t last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place.

Life was a freight train barreling toward just one stop, our loved ones streaking past our windows in blurs of color and light. There was no holding on to any of it, and no slowing it down.

Passing beauties are only the fugitive reflections of the eternal. All beauty alters and all life melts away; in short, everything passes with marvelous rapidity; beautiful Helen of Troy has become a toothless skull, then a handful of dust, then nothing.

The shimmering night does not stay for mortals, not misfortunes, nor wealth, but in a moment it is gone, and to the turn of another comes joy and loss.