E. T. A. Hoffmann Quotes

By numberless examples it will evidently appear that human affairs are as subject to change and fluctuation as the waters of the sea agitated by the winds.

Men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.

Nothing is guaranteed.

None can hold fortune still and make it last.

Most things don't stay the way they are very long.

All the ways of this world are as fickle and unstable as a sudden storm at sea.

Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.

Commerce however we may please ourselves with the contrary opinion, is one of the daughters of fortune, inconstant and deceitful as her mother. She chooses her residence where she is least expected, and shifts her abode when her continuance is, in appearance, most firmly settled.

There is nothing that one can say about acting, writing, producing or directing that cannot be revoked in the next breath. Nothing is immutable. The logic of one year is a folly of the next.

Most things don't stay the way they are for very long. I take nothing for granted and try to be ready for the change that's soon to come.

The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.

Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.

Life to me is defined by uncertainty. Uncertainty is the state in which we live, and there is no way to outfox it.

Don't take too much comfort in the fact that you're successful today because tomorrow could bring failure. There's no surety in life.

Life is full of change and uncertainty. We know this. We experience it on a daily basis.

The world's a scene of changes, and to be constant, in nature were inconstancy.

Stability is not the way of the world.

Anything can change in show business; you know how it goes, everything changes from one day to the other.

You can be on top of everything, and the next minute, you're going to be on the bottom.

I always tell people that my life is in pencil; I have to keep an eraser in my hand because I could always get a call that could change everything.

There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

History is a fickle lady.

Wind and fortune are not lasting.