Literary notes about transient (AI summary)
In literature, "transient" is frequently employed to evoke the ephemeral nature of moments, emotions, or phenomena. It often underscores the fleeting quality of beauty, passion, and experience, as seen in descriptions of brief glimmers of love or momentary sensations [1][2]. In historical narratives, the term highlights the impermanence of social or political conditions, emphasizing how even magnificent triumphs or prominent figures are subject to the passage of time [3][4]. Moreover, writers juxtapose transient states against permanent or eternal elements, creating a rich interplay between the temporary and the enduring in human life [5][6].
- There are passions, transient, fleeting, Loves in hostelries declar'd, Sunrise loves, with sunset ended, When the guest hath gone his way.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Then, how transient is the lustre of beauty!
— from The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius - 19 Yet the success of Trajan, however transient, was rapid and specious.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by this transient hurricane.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - And I have dream'd that the purpose and essence of the known life, the transient, Is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the permanent.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman - In the presence of eternity the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete ContentsDresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll
