Ephemeral Quotes - Page 8

• I try desperately to conquer the transitory nature of my existence, to trap moments before they evenesce, to untangle the confusion of my past. Every instant disappears in a breath and immediately becomes the past; reality is ephemeral and changing, pure longing.

  Isabel Allende

  Past, Reality, Confusion

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• that pathetic short-cut suggested by Nature the supreme joker as a remedy for our loneliness, that ephemeral communion which we persuade ourselves to be of the spirit when it is in fact only of the body - durable not even in memory!

  Vita Sackville-West

  Sex, Memories, Loneliness

  Victoria Sackville-West, Vita Sackville-West (1985). “No Signposts in the Sea”, Penguin Group USA

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• The share of the sympathetic publisher in the author's success - the true success so different from the ephemeral - is apt to be overlooked in these blatant days, so it is just as well that some of us should keep it in mind.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Mind, Different, Share

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1958). “Letters of Ellen Glasgow”

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• what are you looking for? There is no Truth. There's only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction, Life. Life is crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust,stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. what can you do about it, my poor friend?

  Blaise Cendrars

  Jealousy, Lying, Volcanoes

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• The importance of humility. We need the humility to know that truth can be ephemeral, that this can be but one version of the truth.

  Ken Auletta

  Humility, Needs, Importance

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• I really worry about these political people that have no personal life. If there's nothing that's lovely, and if there's nothing that's just ephemeral, that you can just lie on the floor and bust a gut laughing at, then what's the point?

  Arundhati Roy

  Lying, People, Laughing

  "Interview with Arundhati Roy: ‘We Need a Feral Howl’". Interview with Christina Patterson, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 17, 2009.

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• Light That's how I feel- like the winter-fringed breeze might scoop me up into its wings, fly away with me trapped in its feathered embrace. I am a snowflake. A wisp of eiderdown, liberated from gravity. My body is light. Ephemeral. My head is light. I want to sway beneath the weight of air, dizzy with thought. Light filters through my closed eyelids. The sun, chasing shadows, tells me I'm not afloat in dreams.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Dream, Winter, Light

  Ellen Hopkins (2013). “Perfect”, p.109, Simon and Schuster

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• For what we suppose to be our love or our jealousy is never a single, continuous and indivisible passion. It is composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multiplicity they give us the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity.

  Marcel Proust

  Passion, Giving, Unity

  Marcel Proust (1982). “Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove”, Vintage

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• We come humbly to say to the men in the forefront of our government that the civil rights issue is not an Ephemeral, evanescent domestic issue that can be kicked about by reactionary guardians of the status quo; it is rather an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our nation in the ideological struggle with communism. The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now, before it is too late.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Struggle, Destiny, Men

  "The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume IV: Symbol of the Movement, January 1957-December 1958". Book by Martin Luther King, Clayborne Carson, Peter Holloran, Ralph Luker, Penny A. Russell (University of California Press), p. 211, 1992.

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• I'm stuck struggling in the cold water, and all I can do is grieve, grieve, in the hoar necessitous horror of the morning, bitterly I hate myself, bitterly it's too late yet while I feel better I still feel ephemeral and unreal and unable to straighten my thoughts or even really grieve, in fact I feel too stupid to be really bitter, in short I don't know what I'm doing and I'm being told what to do.

  Jack Kerouac

  Morning, Hate, Stupid

  Jack Kerouac (2012). “Desolation Angels”, p.18, Penguin UK

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• I think probably the thing I'm worst at is the most ephemeral stuff, like blogs. I find it really hard to write. And I'm often been asked to write columns for papers in Peru. And I can't. I would die. There's no way I could write a column.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Writing, Thinking, Paper

  "'This American Life,' en Espanol". Interview with Ian Gordon, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2012.

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• If this [the Mysterium cosmographicum] is published, others will perhaps make discoveries I might have reserved for myself. But we are all ephemeral creatures (and none more so than I). I have, therefore, for the Glory of God, who wants to be recognized from the book of Nature, that these things may be published as quickly as possible. The more others build on my work the happier I shall be.

  Johannes Kepler

  God, Nature, Book

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• A cherry pie is . . . ephemeral. From the moment it emerges from the oven it begins a steep decline: from too hot to edible to cold to stale to mouldy, and finally to a post-pie state where only history can tell you that it was once considered food. The pie is a parable of human life.

  Nick Harkaway

  Pie, Hot, Cold

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• Before the discovery of these [underwater] vents, all life on Earth, the key to life on Earth, was believed to be the sun and photosynthesis. But down there, there is no sun, there is no photosynthesis; it's chemosynthetic environment down there driving it, and it's all so ephemeral.

  Mike deGruy

  Motivation, Ocean, Inspiration

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• He said that love was an emotion contra natura that condemned two strangers to a base and unhealthy dependence, and the more intense it was, the more ephemeral.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Two, Emotion, Stranger

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2014). “Of Love and Other Demons”, p.121, Penguin UK

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• In our world, that's the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it's been put together it is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you're alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.

  Muriel Barbery

  Lying, Believe, Mirrors

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• Attaching significance to invariants is an effort to recognize what, because of its form or colour or meaning or otherwise, is important or significant in what is only trivial or ephemeral. A simple instance of failing in this is provided by the poll-man at Cambridge, who learned perfectly how to factorize a^2 - b^2 but was floored because the examiner unkindly asked for the factors of p^2 - q^2.

  Herbert Turnbull

  Learning, Math, Simple

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• We have entered a new phase of culture - we may call it the Age of the Cinema - in which the most amazing perfection of scientific technique is being devoted to purely ephemeral objects, without any consideration of their ultimate justification. It seems as though a new society was arising which will acknowledge no hierarchy of values, no intellectual authority, and no social or religious tradition, but which will live for the moment in a chaos of pure sensation.

  Christopher Dawson

  Religious, Perfection, Live In The Moment

  Christopher Dawson (2001). “Progress and Religion: An Historical Inquiry (The Works of Christopher Dawson)”, p.176, CUA Press

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• Success is a relative quotient, and fame can be ephemeral. An Oscar is something that becomes a part of your record, a tangible acknowledgement that your efforts have made a difference.

  Faye Dunaway

  Differences, Effort, Records

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• When a man in the process of dreaming becomes conscious that he is dreaming, he is no longer identified with the phenomena; he is not affected exultantly or dolefully. God consciously dreams His cosmic play and is unaffected by it's dualities. A yogi who perceives his real self as separate from his active senses and their objects never becomes attached to anything. He is aware of the dream nature of the universe and watches it without being entangled in its complex but ephemeral nature.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Dream, Real, Men

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• Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or ‘dematerialized’

  Lucy R. Lippard

  Art, Mean, Ideas

  Lucy R. Lippard (1973). “Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 ...”, p.7, Univ of California Press

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• The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life. These realities are increasingly under attack from powerful forces, which threaten to disfigure God’s plan for creation.

  Pope Francis

  Powerful, Reality, Effort

  "Pope Francis's meeting with Kim Davis should come as no surprise". www.theguardian.com. September 30, 2015.

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• I just really like writing and making television shows. There are ego rewards in doing battle with other television programs in prime time in the main season. I suppose there are times when I might look at that and think that's the major league. But when you look at it, ultimately would I really want to gamble my livelihood and my ability to connect with my fan base or write a show that I really like writing, or in some cases direct a show that I really like directing, for the sake of winning an ego battle? It's totally not worth it. That stuff is so ephemeral.

  Matt Nix

  Writing, Winning, Thinking

  Source: deadline.com

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• As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.

  Colson Whitehead

  Real, Moving, Gun

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• The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Book, Eye, Technology

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