“A whole from necessary substances is impossible. The whole, therefore, of substances is a whole of contingent things, and the world consists essentially of only contingent things.”

Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII, 25

X, 17
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X
Context: Constantly contemplate the whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are a grain of a fig, and as to time the turning of a gimlet.

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: Creation was not successive; it was one instantaneous thought and act, identical with the will, and was complete and unchangeabble from end to end, including time as one of its functions. Thomas was as clear as possible on that point:— "Supposing God wills anything in effect, he cannot will not to will it, because his will cannot change." He wills that some things shall be contingent and others necessary, but he wills in the same act that the contingency shall be necessary. "They are contingent because God has willed them to be so, and with this object has subjected them to causes which are so." In the same way he wills that his creation shall develop itself in time and space and sequence, but he creates these conditions as well as the events. He creates the whole, in one act, complete, unchangeable, and it is then unfolded like a rolling panorama with its predetermined contingencies.Man's free choice — liberum arbitrium — falls easily into place as a predetermined contingency. God is the First Cause, and acts in all Secondary Causes directly; but while he acts mechanically on the rest of creation,— as far as is known,— he acts freely at one point, and this free action remains free as far as it extends on that line. Man's freedom derives from this source, but it is simply apparent, as far as he is a cause; it is a [... ] Reflex Action of the complicated mirror [... ] called Mind, and [... ] an illusion arising from the extreme delicacy of the machine.

Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: This whole world is one great City, and one is the substance whereof it is fashioned: a certain period indeed there needs must be, while these give place to those; some must perish for others to succeed; some move and some abide: yet all is full of friends—first God, then Men, whom Nature hath bound by ties of kindred each to each. (123).

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

"On the Intuitive Understanding of Nonlocality as Implied by Quantum Theory", Foundations of Physics Vol 5 (1975)

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

Esta é a madrugada que eu esperava
O dia inicial inteiro e limpo
Onde emergimos da noite e do silêncio
E livres habitamos a substância do tempo
"25 de Abril" ("25th April 1974"), in Log Book: Selected Poems, trans. ‎Richard Zenith (Carcanet, 1997), p. 78
O Nome das Coisas (1977)

Notes: from NOTES topic of open(2) manpage, 2009-04-13 http://linux.die.net/man/2/open,
2000s, 2009