quotations about eternity
Eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been.
JOHN DONNE
Book of Devotions
Eternity is but time continued.
F. V. MOTHE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Eternity! Didn't it give you the cold shivers?
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Summer and Smoke
Life is short. Eternity is long.
BENTLEY LITTLE
His Father's Son
It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.
RICHARD JEFFERIES
The Story of My Heart
This world which stretches out before you, is but the vestibule of an immortal life. These deeds that are taking place around you, touch upon chords that extend by a thousand connections, visible and invisible, and vibrate in eternity.
EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN
Duties of Young Men
I will pause to consider this eternity from which the subsequent ones derive.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"A History of Eternity"
We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
PAULO COELHO
The Alchemist
The time will come when every change shall cease,
This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace:
No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze;
Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now shall ever last.
PETRARCH
Triumph of Eternity
It is a long road that leads to eternity, and the inns for travelers are few.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there's this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity.
ANN VOSKAMP
One Thousand Gifts
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Adonais
I am in terror of the infinity before me, having come through the one behind bringing no knowledge I can take on.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Dhalgren
The sum total of all sums total is eternal.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Forever is a long time, but not as long as it was yesterday.
DENNIS H'ORGNIES
attributed, Quotable Quotes
The problem is, eternity is barred to humans, and so humans, all too painfully aware of that and entertaining little hope of appealing against that verdict of fate, seek to stifle and deafen their tragic wisdom in a hubbub of frail and fleeting pleasures. This admittedly being a false calculation--for the same reason which prompted it (that tragic wisdom can never be chased or conjured away for good)--they condemn themselves, whatever their material wealth, to perpetual spiritual poverty: to continuous unhappiness.... Instead of seeking the way to happiness within the limits of their predicament, they take a long detour, hoping that somewhere along the route their odious and repulsive destiny may be escaped or fooled--only to land back in the despair that prompted them to start on their voyage of (dearly wished for, yet unattainable) discovery. The only discovery humans can possibly make on that voyage is that the route they have taken was but a detour that sooner or later will bring them back to the starting line.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
The Art of Life
For me eternity is nothing
But a short while
IRON MAIDEN
"If Eternity Should Fail", Book of Souls
Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Man and Superman
We have the hunger for eternity in our souls, the thought of eternity in our hearts, the destination for eternity written on our inmost being, and the need to ally ourselves with eternity proclaimed by the most short-lived trifles of time. Either these things will be the blessing or the curse of our lives.
ALEXANDER MACLAREN
Sermons Preached in Manchester
He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more he contemplates them, the former will grow greater and the latter less.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon: Or