What we call eternity may be but an endless series of the transitions which men call deaths, abandonments of home, going ever to fairer scenes and loftier heights.—Age after age, the spirit—that glorious nomad—may shift its tent, carrying with it evermore its elements, activity and desire.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
God exists in eternity. The only point where eternity meets time is in the present. The present is the only time there is.
—Marianne Williamson (b.1952) American Activist, Author, Lecturer
The wish falls often, warm upon my heart, that I may learn nothing here that I cannot continue in the other world; that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in heaven.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space; it is To see a world in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour; it is to know not as yet that you are under sentence of life, nor petition that it be commuted into death.
—Francis Thompson (1859–1907) English Poet, Ascetic
Eternity stands always fronting God; a stern colossal image, with blind eyes, and grand dim lips, that murmur evermore, “God—God—God!”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet
Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael (1766–1817) French Woman of Letters
One never ends. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
Eternity is not something that begins after you’re dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American Feminist, Writer
All great natures delight in stability; all great men find eternity affirmed in the very promise of their faculties.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Space is to place as eternity is to time.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.
—Eugene Ionesco (1909–94) Romanian-born French Dramatist
Eternity, thou pleasing dreadful thought! through what variety of untried being! through what new scenes and changes must we pass! The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me; but shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–80) American Preacher, Poet
Every situation, every moment—is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
—William Penn (1644–1718) American Entrepreneur, Political leader, Philosopher
Eternity is really long, especially near the end
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
The disappointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of existence where his wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty of faith.—The successful man feels that the objects he has ardently pursued fail to satisfy the craving of an immortal spirit. The wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, that he may save his soul alive.
—Robert South (1634–1716) English Theologian, Preacher
In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
—William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker
Eternity looks grander and kinder if time grows meaner and more hostile.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
There is, I know not how, in the minds of men, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence, and this takes the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
No man can pass into eternity, for he is already in it.
—Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903) English Clergyman, Writer
He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more he contemplates them, the former will grow greater and the latter less.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
If one understands eternity as timelessness, and not as an unending timespan, then whoever lives in the present lives for all time.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.
—Arthur Koestler (1905–83) British Writer, Journalist, Political Refugee
Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.
—C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) Irish-born British Academic, Author, Literary Scholar
The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it, and may be after it.
—Thomas Browne (1605–82) English Author, Physician
The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher