Fleeting Life Quotes

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, out number the sand grains in the Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here. The number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist... we are privileged to be alive and nd we should make the most of our time on this world.

There is in life only one moment and in eternity only one. It is so brief that it is represented by the fleeting of a luminous mote through the thin ray of sunlight - and it is visible but a fraction of a second. The moments that preceded it have been lived, are forgotten and are without value; the moments that have not been lived have no existence and will have no value except in the moment that each shall be lived. While you are asleep you are dead; and whether you stay dead an hour or a billion years the time to you is the same.

Life is short, and every moment is precious.

Do not act as if you had a thousand years to live.

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed.

Like the dew on the mountain, like the foam on the river, like the bubble on the fountain, thou art gone, and for ever!

He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.

After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.

Robert, you are just a transient. I have seen them come and I have seen them go and I’ll be here long after you have gone.

It's not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.

Nothing is ours except time.

You're never promised your next breath.

I've been a long time coming, and I'll be a long time gone. You've got your whole life to do something, and that's not very long.

The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day.

This world is a vaporous jest at best, Tossed off by the gods in laughter, And a cruel attempt at wit were it, If nothing better came after.

Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

I think death is not simply the last few moments of life, death is something that runs throughout the whole of life. Each of our moments is not only the possibility of affirmation, but it's also we're saying farewell at each moment to something.

Remember: Matter: how tiny your share of it. Time: how brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate: how small a role you play in it.

And I can't say it now. I can't say what I want to say. I hold you-- I-- I clutch you, because I love you so desperately, and time is so short, we have such a little time in which to live and be young, even at best, and I put my arms around you and hold you because I want to love you while I can and I want to know I'm loving you, only it doesn't mean anything because you aren't afraid. You aren't frightened so that you want to clutch it all while you can.

Life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells.

We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.

Life is short, the art long.

Remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.