Ramana Maharshi Quotes

Change as change is mere flux and lapse; it insults intelligence. Genuinely to know is to grasp a permanent end that realizes itself through changes.

The vanishing, volatile froth of the present which any shadow will alter, any thought blow away, any event annihilate, is every moment converted into the adamantine.

Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.

How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the world!

Fixity is always momentary. But how can it always be so? If it were, it would not be momentary - or would not be fixity.

Things standing shall fall, but the moving ever shall stay

Some things don't last forever, but some things do.

We look at mountains and call them eternal, and they seem... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, starts fall from the sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.

Everything flows and nothing abides. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

Nothing lives long Only the earth and mountains

Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.

The nature o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change.

We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.

Our sense that things are transient, that everything is passing and then if you want to save something from the endless flux of experience and the world's movement, you have to set down a stake and try and make something that will last.

The river where you set your foot just now is gone-those waters give way to this, now this.

...nothing is permanent. Everything and everyone you know can change at any moment. That's how I see things now - except for you. You're the one constant in my life.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

Everything changes but change.

Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.

Trying to catch hold of yourself is a fool's errand. There is no you, only a series of former yous, created in one instant, deleted in the next.

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.

Even while a thing is in the act of coming into existence, some part of it has already ceased to be.