Alan Perlis Quotes

Your ego may be just a soap bubble. Maybe for a few seconds it will remain, rising higher in the air. Perhaps for a few seconds it may have a rainbow, but it is only for a few seconds. In this infinite and eternal existence your egos go on bursting every moment. It is better not to have any attachment with soap bubbles.

Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.

Robert, you are just a transient. I have seen them come and I have seen them go and I’ll be here long after you have gone.

We're all just passing time and occupy our chair very briefly.

I think the best thing about a bubble is that it pops and is gone. That is what makes it so precious.

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Everything in life is just for a while.

All things are subject to decay and change.

A little while the rose, And after that the thorn; An hour of dewy morn, And then the glamour goes. Ah, love in beauty born, A little while the rose!

Everything is transient. Everything is constantly changing. The only thing we have is now.

So the more things remained the same, the more they changed after all. Nothing endures. Not love, not a tree, not even a death by violence.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.

I' is merely one of the world's instantaneous spasms.

Nothing lasts-not even pain.

Nothing is forever...nothing lasts.

The languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost!

But then it passed, as all things do.

Stardom is like making love in a hammock - a happy experience but one of uncertain duration.

Everything is about to disappear. You've got to hurry up if you still want to see things.

I'd have to be really quick to describe clouds - a split second's enough for them to start being something else.

There's no such thing as forever.

Words writ in waters.

everything comes and goes; pleasure moves on too early and trouble leaves too slow

Everything is temporary if you give it enough time.