Norman Davies Quotes

At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.

...nothing is permanent. Everything and everyone you know can change at any moment. That's how I see things now - except for you. You're the one constant in my life.

It is easy to take away the world that we think is so permanent and reliable.

Everything changes permantly. How boring if it wouldn't.

If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false.

You too must not count too much on your reality as you feel it today, since like yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.

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.

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent or vital has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.

The only real things in life is the unexpected things. Everything else is just an illusion.

Anything that's given to you can be taken away from you at any time.

May I ask you something?" I say. "Why do you read books, when you could be outside, living a million different adventures every day?" "Because you can always count on a book to stay the same. EVerything else changes when you least expect it," she replies, bitter. "Families split apart, and nothing's forever. In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises.

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition.

Perhaps the magic would last, perhaps it wouldn't. But then again, what does?

I'm always interested in the unexpected and know that things, especially in show business, but in life generally, are inevitably fleeting to one extent.

Security is elusive. It's impossible. We all die. We all get old. We all get sick. People leave us. People change us. Nothing is secure.

While we flatter ourselves that things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from year to year, from day to day.

Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.

Fixity is always momentary. But how can it always be so? If it were, it would not be momentary - or would not be fixity.

Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

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.

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

Sureness is something like a neck brace, which we clamp around our lives, hoping to somehow protect ourselves from the frightening, constant whiplash of change. Sadly, the brace doesn't always hold.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.