Karen Maitland Quotes

Even Castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually.

Time destroys everything.

Time is not kind to everything.

Time is the devourer of all things.

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

Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives.

The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves, like ripe fruit, from our experience, and fall. The wind shall blow them none knows whither.

This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower.

How odd to watch a mortal kindle / Then to dwindle day by day / Knowing their bright souls are tinder / And the wind will have its way

You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.

Life was a freight train barreling toward just one stop, our loved ones streaking past our windows in blurs of color and light. There was no holding on to any of it, and no slowing it down.

By Fate full many a heart has been undone, And many a sprightly rose made woe-begone; Plume thee not on thy lusty youth and strength: Full many a bud is blasted ere its bloom.

We're all expendable. We think the world's going to stop when a pope dies, or a king. And then... life goes on.

What ever truth drops on it eventually grinds to a powder.

We're just a bubble in a boiling pot.

Everything is temporary. Everything is bound to end.

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.

Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.

All things are only transitory.

The foundations of our lives are far more fragile than we think. So we are severely shaken when life turns out to have a will of its own.

When you are young and healthy, it never occurs to you that in a single second your whole life could change.

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.

It was despairing to find out that I am mortal.