Great Throughts Treasury

"Truth, not in distinct and clear-cut definitions but in the limpid obscurity of a single intuition that unites all dogmas in one simple Light, shining into the soul directly from God’s eternity, without the medium of created concept, without the intervention of symbols or of language or the likeness of material things. Here the Truth is One Whom we not only know and possess but by Whom we are known and possessed. Here theology ceases to be a body of abstractions and becomes a Living Reality Who is God Himself." - Thomas Merton

"The grave is the first stage of the journey into eternity." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL

"For Death is no more than a turning of us over from Time to Eternity." - William Penn

"Eternity may be properly denominated a God unfolding himself into light, and shining forth, such as he essentially is, namely, as immutable and the same." -

"Time is the solemn inheritance to where every man is born heir, who has a life-rent of this world – a little section cut out of eternity and given to us to do our work in: an eternity before, and eternity behind; and the small stream between, floating swiftly from one into the vast bosom of the other." -

"Eternity is another word for unity. In it, past and future are not apart; here is everywhere, and now goes on forever. The opposite of eternity is diffusion not time. Eternity does not begin when time is at its end. Time is eternity broken into space, like a ray of light refracted in the water… unity is a task, not a condition. The world lies in strife, in discord, in divergence. Unity is beyond not within reality." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"As is well known, the Devil is the Prince of Time, and God is the King of Eternity. Time without end, that is Hell. Perfect presence, that is Eternity." -

"Eternity consists of opposites." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

"That day, which you fear as being the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

"There is a striking parallelism between science and religion on this point. It is my conviction that that other world is anchored in eternity and the eternal is different from everlasting. Everlasting goes on forever with changes, but eternity is beyond time. It includes time, but is beyond time. The second thing this other world is anchored in is spirit rather than matter, the matrixes of space-time and matter it is not subject to. The third thing is that it is perfect. Those points all converge on a mathematical point, which exceeds our capacity of our left brain to put into words, so it cannot be adequately articulated. Our articulations can be, as a Zen monk would say, fingers pointing toward it at the moon." -

"Forget the past, do not try to project yourself into the future for now is the only acceptable time. You are in eternity now." - Baird T. Spalding

"Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end." -

"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?" - Tom Stoppard, fully Sir Tom Stoppard, born Tomáš Straüssler

"All creatures have existed in the divine essence, as in their exemplar. So far as they conform to the divine idea, all beings were, before their creation, one thing with the essence of God. (God creates into time what was and is in eternity.) Eternally, all creatures are God in God" - Henry Suso

"Creation is not an end in itself; it is a means. This life is a vehicle for us to transport ourselves from a framework of time into the experience of eternity, from the realm of the physical to the realm of the Godly." - Ezriel Tauber

"Eternity is the opposite of time. It is the experience where the barriers of creation and Creator are removed. And this is what the Torah tells us our choice is: time or eternity." - Ezriel Tauber

"The Torah preceded creation in that it was the idea behind creation. It is the primordial knowledge of existence. It is the idea to which life is nothing more than a means. God is eternal, and the temporary nature of the physical creation is contradictory to eternity. Creation, therefore, it not an end in itself; it is a means. It is a means for giving the part of creation made in the Divine image – mankind – the opportunity to earn a share with Hashem in eternity." - Ezriel Tauber

"Torah is a way of life which seeks to help us convert the matter of the mundane elements from our everyday, worldly life into the spiritual energy of eternity." - Ezriel Tauber

"Torah says that there are two facets of life: there is life that exists within the framework of time, and there is life which transcends time and becomes eternity. It is possible to convert this limited life into limitless life." - Ezriel Tauber

"Since the moral law can rightfully command us to live as aspirants to eternity, eternity must really be our destination." - Alfred Edward Taylor

"If you learn to see God in all things you will learn to love them according to His will, not your own self-will. If you see things as in eternity you are less a prey to the pain of their passing, and so you can learn the more easily not to clutch at them as they pass." - Gerald Vann

"Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought of human Being, Eternity, and God." - William Wordsworth

"Architecture aims at Eternity." - Christopher Wren, fully Sir Christopher Wren

"What love we've given, we'll have forever. What love we fail to give, will be lost for all eternity." -

"The love of power comes from a lack of the most important power, that of living a life of eternity with every creature." - A. D. Gordon, fully Aaron David Gordon

"The love of power comes from a lack of the most important power, that of living a life of eternity with every creature." -

"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time." - Albert Camus

"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time." -

"We find that the religions, whose theology has been least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently the least violent and most humane in political practice." -

"We find that the religions, whose theology has been least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently the least violent and most humane in political practice." -

"We find that the religions, whose theology has been least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently the least violent and most humane in political practice." -

"Place no hope in man if he works for his own lifetime and not for his eternity." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"God is a living being, eternal, and infinitely good, since life and eternity without interruption or pause is God’s. Actually, this is God." - Aristotle NULL

"Reality is the transcendent and immanent Ground of all being. Man’s only aim in living is to experience the eternal in the midst of time; as Spinoza expresses it, to know all existences under the form of eternity." - Arthur W Osborn

"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake." - Author Unknown NULL

"It is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our body c an bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time. But notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal." -

"When one sees Eternity in things that pass away and Infinity in finite things then one has pure knowledge." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL

"For it is not to be doubted that the duration of this life is but a moment; that the state of death is eternal, whatever may be its nature; and that thus all our actions and thoughts must take such different directions, according to the state of that eternity, that it is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by the truth of that pint which ought to be our ultimate end." - Blaise Pascal

"Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity; to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside." - Blaise Pascal

"To eternity itself there is no other handle than the present moment. Let any man examine his thoughts and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so. All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone." - Blaise Pascal

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have the place and time been allotted to me?... The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me." - Blaise Pascal

"When I consider short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me?" - Blaise Pascal

"When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not and which know not me, I am afraid ..." - Blaise Pascal

"In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment." - Christopher Fry

"For what, my small philosopher! is hell? `Tis nothing but full knowledge of the truth, when truth, resisted long, is sworn our foe. And calls eternity to do her right." -

"It is easier to accept the message of the stars than the message of the salt desert. The stars speak of man's insignificance in the long eternity of time; the desert speaks of his insignificance right now." - Edwin Way Teale

"Length of time is something entirely relative, and the element of spirit is eternity. Duration, properly speaking, cannot be said to belong to it." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"The notion that there is and can be but one time, and that half of it is always intrinsically past and the other half always intrinsically future, belongs to the normal pathology of an animal mind: it marks the egoistical outlook of an active being endowed with imagination. Such a being will project the moral contrast produced by his momentary absorption in action upon the conditions and history of that action, and upon the universe at large. A perspective of hope and one of reminiscence divide for him a specious eternity; and for him the dramatic centre of existence, though always a different point in physical time, will always be precisely in himself." - George Santayana

"Insofar as it knows the eternity of truth and is absorbed into it, the mind lives in that eternity. In caring only for the eternal, it has ceased to care for that part of itself which can die." - George Santayana

"He who cannot find time to consult his Bible will one day find he has time to be sick; he who has no time to pray must find time to die; he who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin; he who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail; he who cannot find time to work for others may find an eternity in which to suffer for himself." - Hannah More