The Transient Nature of Life

Buddhism

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

The Dhammapada, v. 1, F. Max Müller (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 10), 1881

Christianity

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

The Bible (King James Version), Ecclesiastes 1:2-3, 1611

Taoism

Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. (So it is with) all things. Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle; at their death, dry and withered.

The Tao Te Ching, ch. 76, James Legge (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 39), 1891

Hinduism

When to a man who understands, the Self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble can there be to him who once beheld that unity?

The Upanishads, Part 1, Isha Upanishad, v. 7, F. Max Müller (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 1), 1879

Stoicism

Everything material soon disappears in the substance of the whole; and everything formal is very soon taken back into the universal reason; and the memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.

Meditations, Book VII, Marcus Aurelius, George Long, 1862

Islam

Summary: The Quran repeatedly emphasizes the transient nature of worldly life, describing it as a fleeting enjoyment and comparing it to vegetation that withers. The George Sale translation (1734) is available at Project Gutenberg.

The Koran, George Sale, 1734

Greek Philosophy

Summary: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey depict mortality as the defining condition of human life, with the gods contrasting their immortality against the short-lived existence of mortals. The Samuel Butler translation (1898) is available at Project Gutenberg.

The Iliad, Homer, Samuel Butler, 1898