Ray Bradbury Quotes

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived.

Everything alive must die. Every building built to the sky will fall. Don't try to tell me my everlasting love is a lie.

These flowers will be rotten in a couple hours. Birds will crap on them. The smoke here will make them stink, and tomorrow a bulldozer will probably run over them, but for right now they are so beautiful.

All that is transitory is but a metaphor.

A fire can't burn forever. Eventually, it consumes itself.

But the tune ends too soon for us all

O time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed mountain.

In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

I don't want to die, obviously, but really, the wonder of life is amplified by the fact that it ends.

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?

Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave 's narrowness, though not its peace.

it is all ash and dry leaves and grief gone like an ocean liner.

Even thou who mournst the daisy's fate, That fate is thine--no distant date; Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom!

In life, and in sports, we all know that nothing lasts forever.

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless. The houses are all gone under the sea. The dancers are all gone under the hill.

Only the ephemeral is of lasting value.

All fires burn out at last.

The sun exactly at noon is exactly [beginning to] go down. And a creature when he is born is exactly [beginning to] die.

The world is so ordered that we must, in a material sense, lose everything we have and love, one thing after another, until we ourselves close our eyes.

The body is not important. It is made of dust; it is made of ashes. It is food for the worms. The winds and the waters dissolve it and scatter it to the four corners of the earth. In the end, what we care most for only lasts a brief lifetime, and then there is eternity. Time forever. Millions of worlds are born, evolve, and pass away into nebulous, unmeasured skies; and there is still eternity. Time always. The body becomes dust and trees and exploding fire, it becomes gaseous and disappears, and still there is eternity. Silent, unopposed, brooding, forever.

Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains.

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

And you know, these things don't last forever.' I know, Mandy. Nothing does.' That's the spirit.