Haruki Murakami Quotes

Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out.

Life is a frail moth flying Caught in the web of the years that pass.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man, Less than a span.

Look what a little vain dust we are!

In man's life, time is but a moment; being, a flux; sense is dim; the material frame corruptible; soul, an eddy of breath; fortune a thing inscrutable, and fame precarious.

Our lives feel like these epochs, but really, we are dust in the wind.

Death is always a reality, and life is incredibly short.

Our life is our own to-day, to-morrow you will be dust, a shade, and a tale that is told. Live mindful of death; the hour flies.

Letting go all else, cling to the following few truths. Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant: all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. This mortal life is a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth; and little, too, is the longest fame to come - dependent as it is on a succession of fast-perishing little men who have no knowledge even of their own selves, much less of one long dead and gone.

Life is but sighs; and, when they cease, 'tis over.

Isn't it strange how we move out lives for another day? Like skipping a beat, what if a great wave should wash us all away?

Life is but a day at most.

Life begins when a person first realizes how soon it will end.

I see that all of us who live are nothing but images or insubstantial shadow.

O what is life, if we must hold it thus as wind-blown sparks hold momentary fire?

A mass of dust, world's momentary slave, Is man, in state of our old Adam made, Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade.

Humans may be the only creatures on Earth who spend significant time thinking about the fact that someday their lives will end.

Since fame is an illusion and death is in our future all we have is the next moment before we are swallowed into oblivion.

What makes us really human is it's in the presence of death that we start valuing life.

As a society, when you have your mortality slapped in your face, it changes you.

No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.

Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived.

Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale

Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don’t want to die.

When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant!... So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with work - anything so as not think of death