Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what's happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.

Occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile."..' Opportunity is fleeting, experiment dangerous, and judgement difficult.

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

A loving soul was always more beautiful over the long haul, but actual prettiness was fleeting.

Bravery is a fleeting beast, isn't it? Always there to get you into trouble, but quick to disappear once you're where you want to be

"And further, God should not be regarded as older than His creations by any period of time, but rather by the peculiar property of His own single nature. For the infinite changing of temporal things tries to imitate the ever simultaneously present immutability of His life: it cannot succeed in imitating or equalling this, but sinks from immutability into change, and falls from the single directness of the present into an infinite space of future and past. And since this temporal state cannot possess its life completely and simultaneously, but it does, in the same manner, exist forever without ceasing, it therefore seems to try in some degree to rival that which it cannot fulfill or represent, for it binds itself to some sort of present time out of this small and fleeting moment; but inasmuch as this temporal present bears a certain appearance of that abiding present, it somehow

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 am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.

So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.

For what it's worth, I think happiness is a fleeting condition, not a permanent state of Goddamn mind. I've learned that if you chase after moments of bliss here and there, sometimes those moments will sustain you through the shit.

One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around.

An actor's popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.

Your best creative assets do not occur unless you do a mental shift. You have to be in a positive frame of mind because inspiration is fleeting. I walk to work for inspiration and to clear my mind.

I get those fleeting beautiful moments of inner peace and stillness - and then the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day I'm a human trying to make it through in this world.

The elusive nature of love... it can be such a fleeting thing. You see it there and it's just fluttering and it's gone.

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected momentary and fleeting yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will any marriage happy or unhappy is infinitely more interesting than any romance however passionate.

Sensual pleasures have the fleeting brilliance of a comet a happy marriage has the tranquillity of a lovely sunset.

Hope founded upon a human being a man-made philosophy or any institution is always misplaced... because these things are unreliable and fleeting.

Glory is fleeting but obscurity is forever.

People need to realise what real happiness and success is because success as an actor is fleeting. You can be up there one day and gone the next.