quotations about eternity
If we stretch our thoughts as far as they can reach, eternity is still before us.
J. EDMONDSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
You vowed your love
From here to eternity
A love so true
It never would die
You gave your lips
Gave them so willingly
How could I know
Your kiss meant goodbye?
FRANK SINATRA
"From Here to Eternity"
Eternity is the divine treasure-house, and hope is the window, by means of which mortals are permitted to see, as through a glass darkly, the things which God is preparing.
WILLIAM MOUNTFORD
Martyria
'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Follow me
Come and see
Infinity, eternity
ENIGMA
"Dancing with Mephisto", A Posteriori
Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment.
T. S. ELIOT
"East Coker--1940"
Eternity has no gray hairs! The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of Eternity.
REGINALD HEBER
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Eternity is a depth which no geometry can measure, no arithmetic calculate, no imagination conceive, no rhetoric describe.
HANNAH MORE
Coelebs in Search of a Wife
To see eternity was to be exposed to eternity's whims, oppressed by endless dimensions.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
We're always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can't help feeling that that's what it is.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Crime and Punishment
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.
WILLIAM BLAKE
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
There are two eternities, a past and a future; of the past we know but little, of the future, nothing; between these two eternities lies a speck called time.
E. P. DAY
Day's Collacon
Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
TOM STOPPARD
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity.
EDVARD MUNCH
Edvard Munch: The Frieze of Life
How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Confessions
Shall not this bygone Eden that we knew
In our Eternal Life have shape and hue?
For where Time is not shall not all Time be?
In that calm breast whereto our souls are cleaving
Shall we not find our loved ones beyond grieving
About the hearth-stone of Eternity?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Memory and Hope"
Awful as the consideration of eternity is, it is a source of great consolation to the righteous.
CHARLES BUCK
The Works of the Rev. Charles Buck
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
T. S. ELIOT
"Burnt Norton", The Four Quartets
Reef in a sail at the edge of the world
If eternity should fail
Waiting in line for the ending of time
IRON MAIDEN
"If Eternity Should Fail", Book of Souls