quotations about eternity
Life is short. Eternity is long.
BENTLEY LITTLE
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His Father's Son
Eternity is called whole, not because it has parts, but because it is lacking in nothing.
THOMAS AQUINAS
attributed, Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom
Yes, from the mountain of eternity we shall look down, and behold the whole plain spread before us. Down here we get lost and confused in the devious valleys that run off from the rdots of the hills everywhere, and we cannot make out where the streams are going, and what there is behind that low shoulder of the hill yonder. But when we get to the summit peak and look down, it will all shape itself into one consistent whole, and we shall see it all at once.
THOMAS BOSTON
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
The vanity which adheres to the world in every form, when its pleasures and occupations are regarded as ultimate objects, is at once corrected when they are viewed in connexion with a boundless futurity; and whatever may be their intrinsic value, they rise into dignity and importance when considered as the seed of a future harvest, as the path which, however obscure, leads to honour and immortality.
ROBERT HALL
funeral sermon for the Princess Charlotte of Wales
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
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
There's never a beginning for eternity.
TOBA BETA
Master of Stupidity
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
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Adonais
The thought of eternity consoles for the shortness of life.
FRANCOIS DE MALHERBE
attributed, Thoughts for Meaningful Life
Forever is a long time, but not as long as it was yesterday.
DENNIS H'ORGNIES
attributed, Quotable Quotes
Eternity is so certain and so terrible that a thousand lives would not suffice to prepare for it.
ALPHONSE MARIE LOUIS DE LAMARTINE
Last Night and Execution of the Girondists
This speck of life in time's great wilderness
This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
The past, the future, two eternities!
THOMAS MOORE
Lalla Rookh
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 sum total of all sums total is eternal.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as their are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves upon the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain real dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun.
JAMES JOYCE
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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
When you can live forever what do you live for?
STEPHENIE MEYER
Twilight
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