Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone.

Not Heav'n itself upon the past has pow'r; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble What would have sunk to dust!

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

The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not...yet, I occurred.

Time goes, you say? Ah, no! alas, time stays, we go.

The present will not long endure.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a flying: And this same flower that smiles to day, Tomorrow will be dying.

Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.

The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.

Like a wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we were, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.

Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was is not and never again will be; what is is change.

But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long preserv'd virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave's a fine and private place, But none I think do there embrace.

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone. . . But I will bend the light, pretend that it somehow lingered on

When I say forever,' Koschei whispered, 'I mean until the black death of the world. An Ivan means just the present moment, the flickering light of it, in a green field, his mouth on yours. He means the stretching of that moment. But forever isn't bright; it isn't like that. Forever is cold and hard and final.

Exhaust the little moment / Soon it dies.

A man, when he burns, leaves only a handful of ashes. No woman can hold him. The wind must blow him away.

Time's ruins build eternity's mansions.

All that remains of that minute is time in all its purity, bone-white time.