Francis Chan Quotes

Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.

I can't take one day for granted. That's usually how I think.

Life is but a day; A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way From a tree's summit.

There is nothing certain in a man's life but that he must lose it.

Five years after Aerosmith got back together, I realized how fragile we are as humans. There was a time I thought we were bulletproof, but then things happened and I came to the realization that I had to play every gig as if it was my last show. You have to start thinking that way, because you never know what's going to happen next.

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

The top of a pinnacle now, firewood soon

You want to know the secret of life? It is to breathe in and out. And the mystery of life? You never know when it is going to end.

I feel our relationship to life, to the rest of the world, is very tenuous. It feels fleeting.

No matter how much funding I get, I'm always thinking, 'This is temporary. This is fragile. It could all end tomorrow, and how am I going to make today worth it? If this is my last day in the lab, what can I do so that I can walk out of here saying, 'That was a good day?''

People have built me up to be untouchable, unbeatable, invincible, and I'm not that. I am a man, and I am a winner, but that can change in a second.

One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.

We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.

Everything is transient. Everything is constantly changing. The only thing we have is now.

In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshy sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleeting aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary.

I learnt too late that what is most important to us is always most precious at the moment it occurs, and it is precious in its absolute immediacy and not as some vague confirmation of future directions; since the only certain fact, aside from death, is the flimsiness of everything.

Altogether, the task of estimating the length of human life is beyond our capacity, for directly we say that it is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground.

The essence of what makes life beautiful is the fact that it can go away.

The seed of mortals broods o'er passing things, and hath nought surer than the smoke-cloud's shadow.

Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind.

We are but phantoms ... and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights.

There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands. And yet, this pouring, this flood of encounters, struggles, dreams...

But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.