Great Throughts Treasury

"Make use of time, if thou valuest eternity. Yesterday cannot be recalled; to-morrow cannot be assured; to-day only is thine, which, if thou procrastinatest, thou losest; which loss is lost forever." - Jeremy Taylor

"What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause; a motion, without a mover; a circle, without a centre; a time, without an eternity; a second, without a first: these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it; and that which is made, is, while that which made it is not! This folly is infinite!" - Jeremy Taylor

"In time there is no present, in eternity no future, in eternity no past." - Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Commonly called Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Life is the soul's nursery - its training place for the destinies of eternity." - William Makepeace Thackeray

"A year! A life! What are they? The telling of a tale, the passing of a meteor, a dim speck seen for a moment on time’s horizon dropping into eternity." - Thomason NULL

"Behold I am the heir of eternity, to whom hath been given everlastingness." - Tibetan Book of the Dead NULL

"The heir of eternity, self-begotten and self-born." - Tibetan Book of the Dead NULL

"O Death, what art thou? a stern and silent usher, leading to the judgment for Eternity, after the trial scene of Time." -

"If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles with the just fear of God and love of our fellowmen, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity." - Daniel Webster

"Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life - it points to another world. Political or professional reputation cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offense before God and man is an inheritance for eternity." - Daniel Webster

"Workers need poetry more than bread. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone can be the source of such poetry." - Simone Weil

"The clock indicates the moment - but what does eternity indicate?" - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The poet is the equable man, not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns, nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad, he bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less, he is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key... As he sees the farthest he has the most faith, his thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things, in the dispute on God and eternity he is silent, he sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement, he sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one another like the withered leaves of Autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity." -

"We have in dreams no true perception of time - a strange property of mind ! - for if such be also its property when entered into the eternal disembodied state, time will appear to us eternity! The relations of space as well as of time are also annihilated, so that while almost an eternity is compressed into a moment, infinite space is traversed more swiftly than by real thought." - Hubbard Winslow

"Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through. If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present. Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit. The temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say, its eternal survival after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do so for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive for ever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time." -

"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." -

"This is the artist, then - life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave." - Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe

"Love at its highest point - love, sublime, unique, invincible - leads us straight to the brink of the great abyss, for it speaks to us directly of the infinite and of eternity. It is eminently religious." - Henri Frédéric Amiel

"Let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity." - Silvio Antoniano

"Things reduced to act in time, are known by us successively in time, but by God are known in eternity, which is above time. Whence to us they cannot be certain, forasmuch as we know future contingent things as such; but they are certain to God alone, whose understanding is in eternity above time." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"Eternity is the great atonement of finitide. The earthly is reconciled with the endless. All atonement is fundamentally this: reconciliation of the finite and the infinite." - Leo Baeck

"Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity." - Daniel Barenboim

"The time we spend on earth is but one tick of the eternal clock in an unending eternity. We are here in mortality for a brief moment and then on to the next stage of our development. It does not matter how many trials we have in life, just how we handle them. It does not matter how long we live, just how we live. How can we appreciate eternal good health if we have never experienced sickness, pain, or disease? How can we appreciate eternal joy if we have never experienced disappointment, hardship, or failure? How can we appreciate living forever if we have never known death?" - Phil Batchelor

"Man... is destined to realize his potentialities in eternity, in conditions far more real than those which have so far hemmed his efforts." - Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev

"It is a man listening through a tornado for the Still Small Voice… a soul standing in awe before the mystery of the Universe… a hungry heart seeking for love… Time flowing into Eternity… IT is a man climbing the altar stairs to God." - Dwight Bradley

"No prophet ever sees things under the aspect of eternity. It is always partisan theology, always for the moment, always for the concrete community, satisfied to see only a piece of it all and to speak out that at the risk of contradicting the rest of it." - Walter Brueggemann

"Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end." - Madame de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame Necker

"Life is a gift. Life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness." -

"Our deepest mature conviction is that finite and infinite interpenetrate, as time and eternity interpenetrate, and our problems must be solved in the light of that conviction." - Lily Dougall

"I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence - as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." - Albert Einstein

"Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!" - Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin

"God is said to be in time, because He is absent from no time or because he is in the simplicity of eternity, from which all time flows." - Robert Grosseteste or Grossetete

"It is the Christian hope that to life lived in the presence of God. Death is but the entrance into a larger life. It is the Christian hope that in the larger fellowship of God’s sons for time and eternity there is no final separation from those we love. It is the Christian hope that whether life comes early or late, no life is fruitless, no personality prized by God as an infinitely precious creation is snuffed out like a candle in the dark." - Georgia Harkness

"That the end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become in this life, the most perfect worshipers of God we can possibly be, as we hope to be through all eternity." -

"A person cannot see the beauty of life unless he remembers that the Finite (Sof) and the Infinite (Ein Sof) kiss each other; that the One who is enthroned on high is concerned with all below. We live always at one with eternity. Eternal life has been planted in our midst." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The cry for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is not cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a here-now." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The island of existence is washed by the two oceans of eternity and nothingness, eroding it into what is less and elevating it into what is more than existence, into nothingness and into a higher reality, namely, the identity of event and value, the unity of being and meaning." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"What looks absurd within the limits of time may be luminous within the scope of eternity." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"It is for artists to remind humanity of the unconquerable and to assert the eternity of ideas." -

"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 floats in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come: it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life." -

"Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"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 neither past nor future but only present." -

"Affliction is able to drown out every earthly voice... but the voice of eternity within a man it cannot drown." -

"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." -

"Man has dual citizenry. He loves both in time and in eternity; both in heaven and on earth. But he owes his ultimate allegiance to God." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Going back to the origin is called peace; it means reversion to destiny. Reversion to destiny is called eternity. He who knows eternity is called enlightened." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

"Time, although the philosophers declare it to be completely distinct from eternity, is certainly an available instrument for reaching the Eternal." - John W. Lynch

"Work to simplify the heart, that being immovable and at peace from any invading vain phantasms, thou mayest always stand fast in the Lord within thee, to that degree as if thy soul had already entered the always present now of eternity." - Saint Albertus Magnus, aka "Doctor Universalis", Albert the Great, Albertus Magnus and Albert of Cologne, "the teacher of everything there is to know"

"Today, eternity enters into time, and time, sanctified, is caught up into eternity." - Thomas Merton