Ephemeral Joy Quotes

Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust.

Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn't it?

One can be unhappy before eating caviar, even after, but at least not during.

Man's pleasure is a short time growing And it falls to the ground As quickly.

...nothing wonderful lasted forever. Joy was as fleeting as a shooting star that crossed the evening sky, ready to blink out at any moment.

What though my winged hours of bliss have been, Like angel visits, few and far between.

I've never blown an ugly bubble. Never. They're all beautiful. They're like jewels, transient jewels.

The line of gray along the horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one life we're left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up.

All too soon will Childhood gay Realise Life's sober sadness. Let's be merry while we may, Innocent and happy Fay! Elves were made for gladness!

Happiness may have but one night, as glory but one day.

O sweet, delusive Noon, Which the morning climbs to find, O moment sped too soon, And morning left behind.

It's about moments in life that are great but don't last. They don't go on, but you always have the memory and they have an effect on you. That's what I was thinking about.

The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly - by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.

Pleasure dies at the very moment when it charms us most.

The wine of this fleeting world caused your head to ache.

Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.

Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.

Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.

It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.

All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.

You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water-lilied pond to eat white currants and see goldfish: and go to the fair in the evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that -one is sure to get into some mess before evening.

We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure.

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away.

So if loss of what gives happiness causes you distress when it fades, you can now understand that such happiness is worthless. It is said, those who lose themselves in their desire for things also lose their innate nature by being vulgar.