Ephemeral Happiness Quotes

Happiness is fleeting and life is brief, but we know that, nonetheless, life can be savored and that happiness, even of the ecstatic kind, is available to us.

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.

All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only beloved who will never pass away.

Easter, so longed for, is gone in a day.

Troubles are as endless as pleasures are brief.

Nothing goes sour more easily than the life of pleasure.

A life of mere pleasure! A little while, in the spring-time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in the jubilee of health, it may seem well enough. But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when age comes, and sorrow, and death! A life of pleasure! What does it look like when these great changes beat against it--when the realities of eternity stream in? It looks like the fragments of a feast, when the sun shines upon the withered garlands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and the dead lees of wine.

Bliss in possession will not last; Remembered joys are never past.

The heart does not derive pure pleasure from what is impermanent.

What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.

Yet a little while, and (the happy hour) will be over, nor ever more shall we be able to recall it.

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns Ashes - or it prospers; and anon, Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face, Lighting a little hour or two - is gone.

The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that is cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.

No matter how fleeting Your smile is, Your smile is the very beginning Of your wisdom-light.

It may be life is only worthwhile at moments. Perhaps that is all we ought to expect.

Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last

There are no happy endings, just happy days, happy moments. The only real ending is death, and trust me, no one dies happy. And the price of not dying is that things change all the time, and the only thing you can count on is that there's not a thing you can do about it.

I became aware of just how fleeting the sense of happiness was, and how flimsy its basis: a warm restaurant after having come in from the rain, the smell of food and wine, interesting conversation, daylight falling weakly on the polished cherrywood of the tables. It took so little to move the mood from one level to another, as one might push pieces on a chessboard. Even to be aware of this, in the midst of a happy moment, was to push one of those pieces, and to become slightly less happy.

Let us leave our old friend in one of those moments of unmixed happiness which, if we seek them, there are ever some, to cheer our transitory existence here. There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

Joys too exquisite to last, And yet more exquisite when past.

Fame to me certainly is only a temporary and a partial happiness ... fame is not really for a daily diet, that's not what fulfills you. It warms you a bit but the warming is temporary. It's like caviar, you know - it's good to have caviar but not when you have to have it every meal and every day.

And yet, winning is like a welcome drink going down your throat, like a beautiful embrace. It is brilliant while it lasts but it isn't forever. The high eventually melts away and the journey of life begins afresh. The truly remarkable among us visit these highs periodically; winning then becomes a journey, a graph where each point is crucial but is in reality merely part of a larger curve.