James Baldwin Quotes

The first promise exchanged by two beings of flesh was at the foot of a rock that was crumbling into dust; they took as witness for their constancy a sky that is not the same for a single instant; everything changed in them and around them, and they believed their hearts free of vicissitudes. O children! always children!

Once, once for all, if you would save your heart from breaking, learn this lesson once for all you must cease, in this world, to believe in the eternity of any creed or form at all. Whatever grows in time is a child of time, and is born and lives, and dies at its appointed day like ourselves.

Everything. Things you lost. Things you’re gonna lose. Everything. Here’s where it all ties together.

All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.

I've been through so much in my life. I've seen so much. I know how fast things can change. I know someone can be here one minute and gone the next.

Things change all the time, and they'll probably never be the same again. It's just the natural evolution of the human condition. Things change, and whatever it is is what it is. I mean, you try to start second guessing that, you either get rich or die broke.

Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

Remember, tomorrow is promised to no one.

The present will not long endure.

Reality is observer-determined - it's a spatio-temporal process, which fortunately means that things must change.

The great mass of people are incapable of realizing that in economic life nothing is permanent except change. They regard the existing state of affairs as eternal; as it has been so shall it always be.

Life is change, to cease to change is to cease to live; yet if you may shed a tear beside the death-bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving of a faith.

Relationships are temporary, and everyone needs to understand that.

I feel our relationship to life, to the rest of the world, is very tenuous. It feels fleeting.

I had to make my history quick because there would be no future, merely a gossamer world blown about on the zeitgeist, till zeitgeist, the wind of the times, is blasted away by kamikaze, the wind of God.

It's a mantra I've lived by for as long as I can remember. Nothing lasts for ever.

So I said I wanted you to stay, even though nothing could stay the same.

Because life is short but sweet for certain We're climbing two by two To be sure these days continue These things we cannot change

The whole message of the piece was that possessions are transient. You don't know if you are going to be able to have time with somebody, so you better be careful.

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.

song of elli (old age) "What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain What is gone is gone... What is sea-born dies on land, Soft is trod upon. What is given burns the hand - What is gone is gone... Here is there, and high is low; All may be undone. What is true, no two men know - What is gone is gone... Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose - What is gone is gone.

You are caught in the current of unceasing change. Your life is a ripple in it. Every moment of your conscious life links the infinite past with the infinite future. Take part in both and you will not find the present empty.