Demosthenes Quotes

Men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.

Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

As for success, I don't care for it. It is a fragile thing.

Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge with one dash wipes the picture away.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.

To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear.

That's the nature of this business. Something that took ten years to make can crumble in an instant. It could be snatched away from you at any moment.

Let's be honest: material comes and goes.

I love this business. Here today, gone, gone tomorrow. I was real gone for a while.

Sometimes you think things are going to be forever, and then... of course, they're not.

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

I do have in the back of my head that you never know how long it lasts.

The worldly stuff is not always going to be there and it could be taken away at any moment.

Most things don't stay the way they are very long.

It can be here today and gone tomorrow.

Everything flows and nothing abides. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

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.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any pointand to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us.

That mortal is a fool who, prospering, thinks his life has any strong foundation; since our fortune's course of action is the reeling way a madman takes, and no one person is ever happy all the time.

We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.

Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment.

In the end, all solutions are temporary.

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

There is nothing assured to mortals.