Arthur Golden Quotes

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

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...

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

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

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

It can be here today and gone tomorrow.

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.

Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.

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

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant.

Nothing is yours permanently so you better enjoy it while it's happening.

Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.

I remember as a kid having a balloon and accidentally letting the string go and watching it just float off and into the sky until it disappeared. And there's something about that, even, that feels very much like what life is, you know, that it's fleeting, and it's temporal.

I do have a sense, and I've never not had it, of how easily things can vanish.

Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

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.

Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

You can never figure out what the future sounds like. As soon as you make it, it's the past.