I fondly recall my late German neighbor, Günter Scheer, from whom I learned this expression. "He who writes, remains."
But for how long? Any mark you make will in the end be unmade by time, in time, for all time. We do not write in indelible ink. Old Will said it well:
We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep. (Prospero in The Tempest)
Heraclitus of Ephesus famously wept over the impermanence of things and the vanity of existence as did a certain latter-day Heraclitean. "I am grieved by the transitoriness of things," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in a letter to Franz Overbeck, dated 24 March 1887.
Addendum (8/9/2025):
In a letter from 1881, Nietzsche wrote to Overbeck:
- My dear friend, what is this our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize. Here we are, two good old boats that have been faithful neighbors, and above all your hand has done its best to keep me from 'capsizing'! Let us then continue our voyage — each for the other's sake, for a long time yet, a long time! We should miss each other so much! Tolerably calm seas and good winds and above all sun — what I wish for myself, I wish for you, too, and am sorry that my gratitude can find expression only in such a wish and has no influence at all on wind or weather.[1]
From Wikipedia.