All my past life is mine no more,
The flying hours are gone
Like transitory dreams given over,
Whose images are kept in store,
By memory alone. [ Rochester ]

Action is transitory, a step, a blow.
The motion of a muscle - this way or that. [ Wordsworth ]

Transitory is all human work, small in itself, contemptible; only the worker thereof and the spirit that dwelt in him is significant. [ Carlyle ]

Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, contingent, transitory, almost as liable to change as the winds and waves that waft it to our shores. [ Colton ]

Man lives in Time, has his whole earthly being, endeavour, and destiny shaped for him by Time; only in the transitory Time-symbol is the ever-motionless eternity we stand on made manifest. [ Carlyle ]

Pity, though it may often relieve, is but, at best, a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket. [ Goldsmith ]

It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty. [ Lamartine ]

The contemplation of night should lead to elevating, rather than depressing, ideas. Who can fix his mind on transitory and earthly things, in presence of those glittering myriads of worlds; and who can dread death or solitude in the midst of this brilliant, animated universe? [ Richter ]

I pity men who occupy themselves exclusively with the transitory in things and lose themselves in the study of what is perishable, since we are here for this very end that we may make the perishable imperishable, which we can do only after we have learned how to appreciate both. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The contemplation of night should lead to elevating rather than to depressing ideas. Who can fix his mind on transitory and earthly things, in presence of those glittering myriads of worlds; and who can dread death or solitude in the midst of this brilliant, animated universe, composed of countless suns and worlds, all full of light and life and motion? [ Richter ]