Mohsin Hamid Quotes

The temporal quality of all things was being firmly impressed upon me.

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

We mourn the transitory things and fret under the yoke of the immutable ones.

We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.

I came like Water, and like Wind I go.

There is nothing in the whole world which abides. All things are in a state of ebb and flow, and every shadow passes away. Even time itself, like a river, is constantly gliding away .

What, if as said, man is a bubble.

I came like Water, and like Wind I go.

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.

It's a mantra I've lived by for as long as I can remember. Nothing lasts for ever.

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

Nothing lasts forever. That's the tragedy and the miracle of existence - that everything is impermanent. Everything changes. All we can do is make the best of the time we have. And go down shooting, naturally.

All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances.

Anything we have, we are only borrowing. Anything. Any time.

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.

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

I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent.

Impermanence is the very essence of joy-the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet.

Nothing is permanent. Not even the end of the world.

Nothing is permanent.

As leaves on the trees, such is the life of man.

Commonplace objects are constantly changing… The pies, for example, we now see, are not going to be around forever. We are merely used to the idea that things do not change.

The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

And these things that keep alive on departure know that you praise them; transient, they look to us, the most transient, to be their rescue. They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts, into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever, finally, we may be.