





No Work so great, but what admits decay,

No Act so glorious, but must fade away...

Old things must yield to New, Common to Strange,

Perpetual Motion, brings perpetual Change.

~James Miller (1706–1744), Harlequin-Horace: Or, The Art of Modern Poetry, 1731





He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson





If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. ~Mary Engelbreit





It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. ~W. Edwards Deming (Thanks, Michelle)





All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France





When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. ~Viktor Frankl





Sometimes you see little changes fluttering their pennons to show you that a great change is on its way. ~Henry Stanley Haskins, "Time and Change," Meditations in Wall Street, 1940





Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer. ~Shunryu Suzuki





Every hour proves to us that change and decay are written upon all things earthly. As surely will the proudest monuments of human labor pass away, as the morning mist from among the hills. If we can look upon the past and behold the ravages of time, or on the present and not feel his powerful influence upon ourselves and the things around us, then indeed will our future be dark and cheerless. ~Charles Lanman, "Musings," 1840





You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler. ~Denis Waitley





If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change. ~John A. Simone, Sr.





There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place. ~Washington Irving





When you are through changing, you are through. ~Bruce Barton





The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble. ~Henry Miller





Life is change. ~Heraclitus of Ephesus





Change is inevitable — except from a vending machine. ~Robert C. Gallagher





Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. ~John Kenneth Galbraith





What can we take on trust

in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness,

pride — nothing is secure, nothing keeps.

~Euripides, Hecuba





Change always comes bearing gifts. ~Price Pritchett





They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~Confucius





It is a pleasant feeling to be the first to walk on sands which the tide has just left. It is like being the first to visit a new land. It produces a freshness of sensation something akin to that of early morning, or of spring. It is like entering upon a new stage of life, having a new world before us from which to receive, and upon which to make impressions. ~Henry James Slack (1818–1896), The Ministry of the Beautiful, "Conversation II: Footsteps on the Sand," 1850 [Lyulph speaking —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]





The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions. ~Ellen Glasgow





There were no violins or warning bells... no sense that my little life was about to change. But we never know, do we? Life turns on a dime. ~Stephen King, 11/22/63, 2011





Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril. ~Laurens van der Post





I will swear by a thing to‑day, but I will have the courage to denounce it tomorrow, if needs be. The vows of ignorance are not binding upon enlightenment. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), My Little Book of Life, 1912





Growth is the only evidence of life. ~John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, 1864





Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. ~Irene Peter





The past is the present, and the present the future, to the non-progressive mind. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882





Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. ~Faith Baldwin





The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one. ~William H. Seward





The birds are molting. If only man could molt also — his mind once a year its errors, his heart once a year its useless passions. ~James Allen





The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~William Blake





Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;

Nought may endure but Mutability.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Mutability"





You can avoid having ulcers by adapting to the situation: If you fall in the mud puddle, check your pockets for fish. ~Author Unknown





Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them. ~Marcel Proust





Stubbornness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow. ~Glen Beaman





If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown





It is strange and wonderful what changes may be wrought by a few fleeting months, on the human frame, and the human heart. ~Elizabeth J. Eames, "An Autumn Reverie," October 1840





When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills. ~Chinese Proverb





I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed. ~George Carlin





We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves. ~Lynn Hall





Must the old joys be evermore withholden?

Even their memory keeps me pure and true;

And yet, God speaketh, "I make all things new."

~Sarah Doudney, "Between the Lights," c.1875





To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. ~Henri Bergson





People and their rituals. They cling to things so hard sometimes. ~Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain, 2008





For either or both ways all minds are always,

Morning and noon and night, sleeping and waking,

Summer and winter, always always changing...

~James Henry, "Love," 1855 December 26th





The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down. ~Jawaharlal Nehru





What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960





We would rather be ruined than changed;

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.

~W.H. Auden





Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history. ~Joan Wallach Scott





You never have a friend all figured out. Just when you think you know what makes them tick, they tock. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com





All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. ~Ellen Glasgow





Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! ~Andre Gide





I will not carry a thing to its culmination simply because I entered in. I may have said I wanted it, but I will have the courage to say, "I have changed my mind." ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), My Little Book of Life, 1912





If you want to make enemies, try to change something. ~Woodrow Wilson





After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over. ~Alfred Edward Perlman, New York Times, 3 July 1958





Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights. ~Pauline R. Kezer





If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing. ~Saint Augustine





We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it. ~John Steinbeck, America and Americans





Few can accept happiness if it means change. We want the life we have now, only happier. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com





A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. ~John Ciardi





Little stones that are pelted into the lake of consciousness should not throw the whole lake into commotion. ~Paramahansa Yogananda, God Talks With Arjuna





The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. ~Japanese Proverb





Everything comes to pass, nothing comes to stay. ~Matthew Flickstein





Changes in life are like extra-strength Gold Bond Medicated Powder. The burning means it's working. ~John Mayer





The devil could change. He was once an angel and may be evolving still. ~Laurence J. Peter





Nothing that is can pause or stay;

The moon will wax, the moon will wane,

The mist and cloud will turn to rain,

The rain to mist and cloud again,

Tomorrow be today.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow





There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight. ~Ezra Pound





Every beginning is a consequence — every beginning ends some thing. ~Paul Valery





People don't change. Only their costumes do. ~Gene Moore





God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me. ~Author Unknown





I hope I can be the autumn leaf, who looked at the sky and lived. And when it was time to leave, gracefully it knew life was a gift. ~Dodinsky





She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened. ~Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells





We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance. ~Harrison Ford





It's humbling to start fresh. It takes a lot of courage.... You just have to put your ego on a shelf and tell it to be quiet. ~Jennifer Ritchie Payette





If you gaze at the clouds, close your eyes for five minutes, then re-open them and the clouds are different, you don't freak out about it. So, why do you worry when things shift and change in your life? New day, new sky, every moment too. ~Terri Guillemets





Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower





I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like a date on a tombstone. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, 1963





No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times. ~Michel Montaigne





Sometimes you just need to be open to the universe's alternate plans for you. ~Terri Guillemets





If you want to truly understand something, try to change it. ~Kurt Lewin





Yes, change is the basic law of nature. But the changes wrought by the passage of time affects individuals and institutions in different ways. According to Darwin's Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment.... Applying this theoretical concept to us as individuals, we can state that the civilization that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral, and spiritual environment in which it finds itself. ~Leon C. Megginson, 1963 [See quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/04/adapt and quoteinvestigator.com/2014/12/19/fittest for further details on this and similar quotations. By the by, "survival of the fittest" was coined by Herbert Spencer; "natural selection" is the phrase associated with Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.] —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]





Every single thing changes and is changing always in this world. Yet with the same light the moon goes on shining. ~Saigyo





We do not knowingly choose unhappiness over happiness. Rather we choose security over risk, stability over change, what seems permanent over what seems fleeting. We choose unhappiness because it has a better chance to be lasting. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com, 2019





Things do not change; we change. ~Henry David Thoreau





Our only security is our ability to change. ~John Lilly





Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. ~Bertold Brecht





He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. ~Francis Bacon, "On Innovation," Essays, 1597





Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly. ~Francis Bacon





Changing and actually improving are two quite different skills. ~Dr. SunWolf, 2015 tweet, professorsunwolf.com





A scholar who loves comfort is not fit to be called a scholar. ~Confucius, Analects





Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the mercury in the barometer, indicate nothing but the changeableness of the weather. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827





Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour. ~Arthur Schopenhauer





When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. ~Stanislaw Lec





The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them. ~George Bernard Shaw