“Great art is an instant arrested in eternity.”

As quoted in Alice, The Life and Times of Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1979) by Howard Teichmann, p. 237.

On his inspiration, when he was still learning English and walking alone in the fields of Long Island, to take up the reading of No Cross, No Crown by William Penn, after having first set it aside upon realizing it was a religious book. In Memoirs of the Life and Gospel Labors of Stephen Grellet (1860), p. 20
Context: I was suddenly arrested by what seemed to be an awful voice proclaiming the words, "Eternity! Eternity! Eternity!" It reached my very soul — my whole man shook — it brought me like Saul to the ground. The great depravity and sinfulness of my heart were set before me, and the gulf of everlasting destruction to which I was verging. I was made to bitterly cry out, "If there is no God — doubtless there is a hell." I found myself in the midst of it.

Notebook L (1945) edited by Edmund Wilson
Quoted, Notebooks

Source: A Countess Below Stairs

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 15

Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 73.