Fleeting quotes
178 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"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."
"The poignancy of a photograph comes from looking back to a fleeting moment in a floating world. The transitoriness is what creates the sense of the sacred"
"In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting."
"What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?"
"Love is a fleeting emotion, to reach true nirvana one must know themselves and forsake love, for it breeds contempt"
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside fleeting — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"The pleasures of love lasts but a fleeting but the pledges of life outlusts a lieftime."
"True happiness comes from gaining insight and growing into your best possible self. Otherwise all you're having is immediate gratification pleasure, which is fleeting and doesn't grow you as a person."
"Happiness isn't a constant. You get fleeting glimpses. You have to fight for those moments, but they make it all worth it."
"Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence."
"With me, satisfaction is always very fleeting with our work. I always get a little restless with it."
"The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment."
"It is by his activities and not by enjoyment that man feels he is alive. In idleness we not only feel that life is fleeting, but we also feel lifeless."
"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."
"And I may stand where health, success, and power Await my coming, if, each fleeting hour I cling to love and patience; and abide With stainlessness; and never step aside From high integrity; so shall I see At last the land of immortality."
"For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others."
"I wonder what kind of lives they will have built for themselves when they turn 45 and can't really have any connection with people because they are so used to fleeting sexual."
"No matter how fleeting Your smile is, Your smile is the very beginning Of your wisdom-light."
"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 recall my fleeting instants in Savannah as the taste of a cup charged to the brim."
"When it is time to part, then it is time to part. There should be no regrets. The beauty of marriage is like the fleeting perfection of a snowflake."
"There is a coherence in things, a stability; something... is immune from change and shines out... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby."
"Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition."
"Fame is fleeting, honey. Fame is fleeting and it changes."
"Victory is fleeting. Losing is forever."
"A lot of things people see as innovative are faddish and fleeting, and I'm simply telling you, staying power like broadcasting has is more important in the end than the latest app you can download."
