Source: Letter to his daughter (1978), p. 14.
“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, nothing perishes).”
Variant: All things change; nothing perishes.
Source: Metamorphoses
“Everything's destiny is to change, to be transformed, to perish. So that new things can be born.”
“All things Death claims. To perish is not doom, but law.”
Omnia mors poscit. Lex est, non poena, perire.
From Epigrammata: De Qualitate Temporis 7, 7 as quoted in L. De Mauri, Angelo Paredi, Gabriele Nepi, 5000 proverbi e motti latini https://books.google.gr/books?id=hjiMpXCMCvsC&printsec=, Hoepli Editore, 1995, p. 384 and Hubertus Kudla, Lexikon der lateinischen Zitate https://books.google.gr/books?id=2Vtf_GVrdbgC&dq=, C. H. Beck, 2007, p. 416. The full text can be found in Anthologia Latina I, fasc. 1 (Walter de Gruyter, 1982) https://books.google.gr/books?id=PHWq0avQcGIC&pg=, ed. by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, p. 164. Harold Edgeworth Butler ( Post-Augustan Poetry: From Seneca to Juvenal https://books.google.gr/books?id=2gR48lrVJ-cC&dq=, Library of Alexandria, 1969, ch. 2, sec. 2) attributes De Qualitate Temporis to Seneca the Younger.
Misattributed
“Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee:
All things pass;
God never changes.”
"Poem IX", in Complete Works St. Teresa of Avila (1963) edited by E. Allison Peers, Vol. 3, p. 288
Context: Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee:
All things pass;
God never changes.
Patience attains
All that it strives for.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.
As translated by Paul Harrison <!-- Fifth dialogue ?-->
Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)
Context: The Universe is one, infinite, immobile. The absolute potential is one, the act is one, the form or soul is one, the material or body is one, the thing is one, the being in one, one is the maximum and the best... It is not generated, because there is no other being it could desire or hope for, since it comprises all being. It does not grow corrupt. because there is nothing else into which it could change, given that it is itself all things. It cannot diminish or grow, since it is infinite.
“All perishes. A thing of flesh and pore
Am I. Divine impatience also dies.”
Allez! Tout fuit! Ma présence est poreuse,
La sainte impatience meurt aussi!
As translated by by C. Day Lewis
Charmes ou poèmes (1922)
“If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.”
Source: The Candymakers
