Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

If you think of the infinite resources of eternity you have little cause to take pleasure in any continuation of your name.

Cause | Eternity | Little | Pleasure | Wisdom | Think |

Allan Chalmers, fully Allan Knight Chalmers

Music is the language of praise; and one of the most essential preparations for eternity is delight in praising God; a higher acquirement, I do think, than even delight and devotedness to prayer.

Eternity | God | Language | Music | Praise | Prayer | Wisdom |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

In the light of eternity we shall see that what we desired would have been fatal to us, and that what we would have avoided was essential to our well-being.

Eternity | Light | Wisdom |

Hermetica - Asclepius III NULL

Eternity enters into time, and it is in time that all movement takes place... Eternity is not limited by the conditions of time, and time is eternal in virtue of its cyclic recurrence.

Eternal | Eternity | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

James Monroe Hubbert

When time ends, eternity begins.

Ends | Eternity | Time | Wisdom |

Herrick Johnson

Buying, possessing, accumulating - this is not worldliness. But doing this in the love of it, with no love of God paramount - doing it so that thoughts of eternity and God are an intrusion - doing it so that one’s spirit is secularized in the process; this is worldliness.

Eternity | God | Love | Spirit | Wisdom | God |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it. In every man there is latent the highest possibility; one must follow it. If God does not wish it, then let Him prevent it, but one must not hinder oneself. Trusting to God I have dared, but I was not successful; in that is to be found peace, calm, a confidence in God. I have not dared; that is woeful thought, a torment in eternity.

Confidence | Eternity | God | Man | Peace | Thought | Wisdom | God |

John Locke

If there remains an eternity to us after the short revolution of time we so swiftly run over here, ‘tis clear that all the happiness that can be imagined in this fleeting state is not valuable in respect of the future.

Eternity | Future | Respect | Revolution | Time | Wisdom | Respect | Happiness |

Maurice Nicoll

To live unto eternity is to live unto aeon, unto unity, unto wholeness, completeness, unto the integration of all the life. And this is now. The enemy to now is the illusion of passing-time... When we reach the now the world is turned the other way round. We are at the centre of things. The responsibility is ours. Had we now in our lives we would cease to blame.... Universe evolves out of one’s own mind... because the WORLD is a series of possible mental transformations

Blame | Enemy | Eternity | Illusion | Integration | Life | Life | Mind | Responsibility | Time | Unity | Universe | Wholeness | Wisdom | World |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

What really is? That which is eternal: that is to say, what never had birth, nor will ever have an end; to which time never brings any change. For time is a mobile thing, which appears as in a shadow, together with matter, which is ever running and flowing, without ever remaining stable or permanent... Wherefore we must conclude that God is - not at all according to any measure of time, but according to an eternity immutable and immobile, not measured by time or subject to any decline.

Birth | Change | Eternal | Eternity | God | Time | Will | Wisdom | God |

Maurice Nicoll

Time is change - on all sorts of different scales; and the phenomenal world is made up of this continual changing, at different rates, of everything, like an enormous clock full of wheels. Outside, there is this stream of becoming; and within, a stream of ever-changing thoughts and feelings, a succession of different I’s, of fragmentary bits of ourselves - an inner world of becoming in which nothing is, in which we possess nothing and do not possess ourselves. We think of all this changing in time as progress; and not only do we have this extraordinary and absurd illusion, but we imagine that the stability that we all secretly crave can be sought for in all this machinery of change, in the turning wheels of this enormous clock. But we know that what is stable was always beyond time... The real distinction, therefore, between time and eternity is qualitative and so must lie in the realm of psychological experience.

Absurd | Change | Distinction | Eternity | Experience | Feelings | Illusion | Nothing | Progress | Time | Wisdom | World | Think |

Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

God is withdrawn from both ends of time, for his life is not Time, but Eternity, the archetype of time. And in Eternity there is no past and future, only present.

Ends | Eternity | Future | God | Life | Life | Past | Present | Time | Wisdom |

Milorad Pavić

We are here because in this part of the universe time is trained to stop... Life cannot survive in time that flows, or while it flows. Life survives only when time stands still... So it could happen someplace, somehow, that eternity and time would meet at a golden intersection. At the very heart of the cross, where eternity and time would connect, time would stop to be blessed by eternity. And that, in fact, is our present. Consequently, the present is the very portion of time that has stopped. Life survives only in the present. The past, therefore, consists of moments during which time has previously stopped; the future, of moments during which time will subsequently stop. So here we are. We are here because in this part of the universe time stops and makes life possible. Perhaps we can imagine a time that is not lined up to intersect eternity, a time that would seem sterile to our way of thinking. In such a region of the universe, we would not be in a position to exist since our dominant features are those of life and death.

Death | Eternity | Future | Heart | Life | Life | Past | Position | Present | Thinking | Time | Universe | Will | Wisdom | Blessed |

Proclus, fully Proclus Lycaeus NULL

Is not time the image of Eternity because it effects the perfecting of earthly natures just as Eternity is the container and preserver of being?... Things which proceed from Eternity are not able to share in a stable perfection, whole and unchanging, are under the dominion of time.

Eternity | Perfection | Time | Wisdom |

John Rossel

Music is the heartbeat of the universe. It reaches into the outer ramparts of eternity where time and space are nonexistent; it touches the stars and is reflected in the beauty of the galaxy. It is exemplified in the mathematical precision found in the largest star and the tiniest molecule. Music is emotional. It touches the heart and creates a response within the listener without his being aware of the technique.

Beauty | Eternity | Heart | Music | Precision | Space | Time | Universe | Wisdom | Precision | Beauty |

Joseph R. Sizoo

Serenity comes to the man who lives with an unfaltering faith in an unfailing God. The person who lives with eternity in his heart will find a strange calm in his spirit.

Eternity | Faith | God | Heart | Man | Serenity | Spirit | Will | Wisdom |

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Commonly called Alfred Lord Tennyson

In time there is no present, in eternity no future, in eternity no past.

Eternity | Future | Past | Present | Time | Wisdom |