Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost.

I do have a sense, and I've never not had it, of how easily things can vanish.

Time destroys everything.

Time is not kind to everything.

Oh, how swiftly the glory of the world passes away!

All that's bright must fade, The brightest still the fleetest; All that's sweet was made But to be lost when sweetest.

Time is the devourer of all things.

Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be.

Let's be honest: material comes and goes.

Dreams rise like the sun and set like the sun: One minute, it is high and bright; the next minute, you might lose it.

The hardest thing for me is the sense of impermanence. All passes; nothing returns.

Everything, no matter how beautiful, is only with us for awhile.

Things always seem to glide away. They come to you, stay a moment, then leave again.

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?

Nothing gold can stay.

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

Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white-then melts for ever . . .

How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?

Writing is a futile attempt to preserve what disappears moment by moment.

You have to hurry up if you want to see something, everything disappears.

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical guise.

Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.

Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away.

These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

There's certainly nothing lasting and definite about the theater.