Quotes about eternity
page 20

Sri Chinmoy photo
Brian Leiter photo
Arthur Koestler photo
Karl G. Maeser photo

“The fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom. This life is one great object lesson to practice on the principles of immortality and eternal life. Man grows with his higher aims. Let naught that is unholy enter here.”

Karl G. Maeser (1828–1901) prominent Utah educator and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Written on a chalk board during his Nov. 9th, 1900 visit to Maeser Elementary School in Provo, Utah; Maeser Chalkboards Preserved http://education.byu.edu/news/2005/01/01/maeser-chalkboards-preserved|date=1

Thomas Osborne Davis (Irish politician) photo
Ray Comfort photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo

“(…) inspiring words are eternal; the physical body will go, it is perishable.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Inspiration
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 17 August 1983.

Robert Seymour Bridges photo

“Beauty, the eternal Spouse of the Wisdom of God
and Angel of his Presence thru' all creation.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Book IV, lines 1-2.
The Testament of Beauty (1929-1930)

Varadaraja V. Raman photo
Menno Simons photo
Carl Linnaeus photo

“Theologically, man is to be understood as the final purpose of the creation; placed on the globe as the masterpiece of the works of Omnipotence, contemplating the world by virtue of sapient reason, forming conclusions by means of his senses, it is in His works that man recognizes the almighty Creator, the all-knowing, immeasurable and eternal God, learning to live morally under His rule, convinced of the complete justice of His Nemesis.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

As translated in ‎Michael John Petry (2001), in Nemesis Divina: (Edited and Translated with Explanatory Notes by M.J. Petry); Springer. p. 21
The excerpt was republished in Latin by Linnaues himself, in Systema Naturae ed. (1788) http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=Z3PVJQMIhboC&pg=PA5&dq=%22Crentorem+oinniputentem+,+omnifcium+%22&hl=es-419&sa=X&ei=QyjYUuWnE8TrkQenv4DoBw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Crentorem%20oinniputentem%20%2C%20omnifcium%20%22&f=false: ""Theologice: Te ultimum finem creationis; In Telluris globum, Omnipotentis magisterium, introductum; ratione sapiente, secundum senfus concludente, mundi contemplatorem: ut ex opere agnosceres Creatorem omnipotentem, omniscium, immensum & sempiternum DEum, cujus sub imperio quod moraliter vivas, a justissima ejus Nemesi convicaris."
Nemesis Divina (1734)

John Ruysbroeck photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“The truth about the world about us.' 'Truth' is a word used in many different ways - 'You’re not telling the truth.' 'The truth about conditions in Russia.' 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' I want to use it here in the sense of what lies behind and outward show. I. et me hasten to explain by giving an example. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. That is what we see; that is the ‘outward show'. In the past the outward show was regarded as the truth. But then a scientist came along to question it and then to announce that the truth was quite different from the appearance: the truth was that the earth revolved and the sun remained still -the outward show was telling a lie. The curious thing about scientific truths like this is that they often seem so useless. It makes no difference to the average man whether the sun moves or the earth moves. He still has to rise at dawn and stop work at dusk. But because a thing is useless it does not mean that it is valueless. Scientists still think it worthwhile to pursue truth. They do not expect that laws of gravitation and relativity are going to make much difference to everyday life, but they think it is a valuable activity to ask their eternal questions about the universe. And so we say that truth - the thing they are looking for—is a value.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Miguel de Unamuno photo
Liam O'Flaherty photo
Jerry Falwell photo
Eino Leino photo

“The others got heart, I got the harp.
They grieved, had fun, me not, me not.
O wretched me, can't live, nor part:
my heart throbs not, but tingles, and rings!

O dire fate, the hardest lot:
no peace grants the night, the day no less,
no mercy shows time, nor eternity:
just a jeering and tingling heart-less-ness.”

Eino Leino (1878–1926) Finnish poet and journalist

Eino Leino. "The Harp-Of-the-Wind," (1905), Leevi Lehto (transl.), in: Leevi Lehto. Leevi Lehto. Finnish poetry: then and now, January 2005. Published online at upenn.edu. Accessed 20-03-2013

Henry Taylor photo
Francisco de Sá de Meneses photo

“… the mighty Knight who set sail in the most western part of Europe and there in the Orient (where the infant Sun gives its first light) set the standard of the Holy Escutcheons. He punished the evil tyrant and won the city of the Golden Kingdom of Malaya through his strength and skill, and with pious example transformed the profane mosque into a sacred temple. …The time is coming, King Afonso VI, when holy Zion will have its freedom through you. And the Monarchy, consecrated by Heaven for eternity, that well-born plant which flowering will give fruit to Christendom, the theme of a thousand swans, singing about you as they immortalize themselves with you. Titus avenged the unjust death of Christ by the total destruction of Jerusalem; and God has chosen you to whom he gave an unconquerable heart to be the Avenger of His Faith. Take up the staff, then, when Heaven bids you march against the false worship of the Muslims, a worthy enterprise for your courage.”

Francisco de Sá de Meneses (1600–1664) Portuguese poet

. . . . . . o grande Cavaleiro,
Que ao vento velas deu na ocídua parte,
E lá, onde infante o Sol dá luz primeiro,
Fixou das Quinas santas o Estandarte.
E com afronta do infernal guerreiro,
(Mercê do Céu) ganhou por força, e arte
O áureo Reino, e trocou com pio exemplo
A profana mesquita em sacro templo.
* * * *
O tempo chega, Afonso, em que a santa
Sião terá por vós a liberdade,
A Monarquia, que hoje o Céu levanta,
Devoto consagrando à eternidade.
Ó bem nascida generosa planta,
Que em flor fruto há-de dar à Cristandade,
E matéria a mil cisnes, que, cantando
De vós, se irão convosco eternizando.<p>De Cristo a injusta morte vingou Tito
Na de Jerusalém total ruína:
E a vós, a quem Deus deu um peito invito,
Ser vingador de sua Fé destina.
Extinguir do Agareno o falso rito
É de vosso valor a empresa dina:
Tomai pois o bastão da empresa grande
Para o tempo que o Céu marchar vos mande.
Malaca Conquistada pelo grande Afonso de Albuquerque (1634) — quoted in The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, Vol. III (London, 1880) https://archive.org/stream/no62works01hakluoft#page/n13/mode/2up, and translated by Edgar C. Knowlton Jr. http://www.sabrizain.org/malaya/library/conquestofmalacca.pdf

Charles Stuart Calverley photo
William Edward Hartpole Lecky photo
John Calvin photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Jesus is eternally right. History is replete with the bleached bones of nations that refused to listen to him.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: Jesus is eternally right. History is replete with the bleached bones of nations that refused to listen to him. May we in the twentieth century hear and follow his words-before it is too late. May we solemnly realize that we shall never be true sons of our heavenly Father until we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

Heinrich Heine photo

“The duration of religions has always been dependent on human need for them. Christianity has been a blessing for suffering humanity during eighteen centuries ; it has been providential, divine, holy. All that it has done in the interest of civilisation, curbing the strong and strengthening the weak, binding together the nations through a common sympathy and a common tongue, and all else that its apologists have urged in its praise all this is as nothing compared with that great consolation it has bestowed on man. Eternal praise is due to the symbol of that suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the crucified Christ, whose blood was as a healing balm that flowed into the wounds of humanity. The poet especially must acknowledge with reverence the terrible sublimity of this symbol.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up. p. 25
Context: I believe in progress; I believe that happiness is the goal of humanity, and I cherish a higher idea of the Divine Being than those pious folk who suppose that man was created only to suffer. Even here on earth I would strive, through the blessings of free political and industrial institutions, to bring about that reign of felicity which, in the opinion of the pious, is to be postponed till heaven is reached after the day of Judgment. The one expectation is perhaps as vain as the other; there may be no resurrection of humanity either in a political or in a religious sense. Mankind, it may be, is doomed to eternal misery; the nations are perhaps under a perpetual curse, condemned to be trodden under foot by despots, to be made the instruments of their accomplices and the laughing-stocks of their menials. Yet, though all this be the case, it will be the duty even of those who regard Christianity as an error still to uphold it; and men must journey barefoot through Europe, wearing monks' cowls, preaching the doctrine of renunciation and the vanity of all earthly possessions, holding up before the gaze of a scourged and despised humanity the consoling Cross, and promising, after death, all the glories of heaven.
The duration of religions has always been dependent on human need for them. Christianity has been a blessing for suffering humanity during eighteen centuries; it has been providential, divine, holy. All that it has done in the interest of civilisation, curbing the strong and strengthening the weak, binding together the nations through a common sympathy and a common tongue, and all else that its apologists have urged in its praise all this is as nothing compared with that great consolation it has bestowed on man. Eternal praise is due to the symbol of that suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the crucified Christ, whose blood was as a healing balm that flowed into the wounds of humanity. The poet especially must acknowledge with reverence the terrible sublimity of this symbol.

Julian (emperor) photo

“The visible world has, as I have said, subsisted around him from all eternity: and the Light also which surrounds the world has also its place from all eternity, not intermittently, nor in different degrees at different times, but constantly and in an equable manner.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: The visible world has, as I have said, subsisted around him from all eternity: and the Light also which surrounds the world has also its place from all eternity, not intermittently, nor in different degrees at different times, but constantly and in an equable manner. But whosoever will attempt to estimate, as far as thought goes, this external Nature, by the measure of Time, he will very easily discover respecting the Sun, Sovereign of all things, of how many blessings he is, from all eternity, the author to the world.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo, we shall boldly challenge unjust mores, and thereby speed up the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."

Juan Ramón Jimenéz photo

“Transition is a complete present which unites the past and the future in a momentary progressive ecstasy, a progressive eternity, a true eternity of eternities, eternal moments.”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

"Heroic Reason", as translated by H. R. Hays, in Selected Writings of Juan Ramon Jimenez (1957) edited by Eugenio Florit, p. 231.
Context: A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition. When we say an artist is in a state of transition, many believe that we are belittling. In my opinion when people speak of an art of transition this indicates a better art and the best that art can give. Transition is a complete present which unites the past and the future in a momentary progressive ecstasy, a progressive eternity, a true eternity of eternities, eternal moments. Progressive ecstasy is above all dynamic; movement is what sustains life and true death is nothing but lack of movement, be the corpse upright or supine. Without movement life is annihilated, within and without, for lack of dynamic cohesion. But the dynamism should be principally of the spirit, of the idea, it should be a moral dynamic ecstasy, dynamic in relation to progress, ecstatic in relation to permanence.

Leonard H. Courtney photo

“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”

Leonard H. Courtney (1832–1918) British politician

Context: : These have often been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but also to Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, and many others; Lord Denning in The Road to Justice (1988) states that the phrase originated in a statement of Irish orator John Philpot Curran in 1790: "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."

Karen Blixen photo

“Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence.”

"The Blank Page"
Last Tales (1957)
Context: Why, you are to become a story teller, and I shall give you the reasons! Hear then: Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence. Whether a small snotty lass understands it or not.

Thomas Jefferson photo

“I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

On members of the clergy who sought to establish some form of "official" Christianity in the U.S. government. Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush (23 September 1800)
This has commonly been quoted as "I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man", "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man", and "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Neither capitalization of "god" and "eternal", nor a comma before or after "eternal" are apparent in the original. Photograph of the original manuscript at the Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/022/0400/0440.jpg - LOC transcription http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj090069)) <!-- NOTE : though this transcription has a comma between god and eternal in there is no comma apparent in the photograph and where grammar might best place it remains ambiguous. -->
The first portion of this statement has also been widely paraphrased as "The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly".
1800s
Context: The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo

“But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity”

No. XIV
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)
Context: If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile —her look —her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" -
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

Mansur Al-Hallaj photo

“Concealment does not veil Him
His pre-existence preceded time,
His being preceded not-being,
His eternity preceded limit.”

Mansur Al-Hallaj (858–922) Persian mystic, revolutionary writer and teacher of Sufism

On Allah (God), as quoted in Doctrine of Sufis (1977) by Abû Bakr al- Kalâbâdî, as translated by A. J. Arberry, Ch. 5 p. 15

Aristotle photo

“If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal.”

Book XII, 1072b.24
Metaphysics
Original: (el) εἰ οὖν οὕτως εὖ ἔχει, ὡς ἡμεῖς ποτέ, ὁ θεὸς ἀεί, θαυμαστόν: εἰ δὲ μᾶλλον, ἔτι θαυμασιώτερον. ἔχει δὲ ὧδε. καὶ ζωὴ δέ γε ὑπάρχει: ἡ γὰρ νοῦ ἐνέργεια ζωή, ἐκεῖνος δὲ ἡ ἐνέργεια: ἐνέργεια δὲ ἡ καθ᾽ αὑτὴν ἐκείνου ζωὴ ἀρίστη καὶ ἀΐδιος.
Source: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0051%3Abook%3D12%3Asection%3D1072b

Elbert Hubbard photo

“By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land.”

A Message to Garcia (1899)
Context: The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter & did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing — "Carry a message to Garcia!"

Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“Let us transfix this momentary eternity which encloses everything, past and future, but without losing in the immobility of language any of its gigantic erotic whirling.”

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: All hopes and despairs vanish in the voracious, funneling whirlwind of God. God laughs, wails, kills, sets us on fire, and then leaves us in the middle of the way, charred embers.
And I rejoice to feel between my temples, in the flicker of an eyelid, the beginning and the end of the world.
I condense into a lightning moment the seeding, sprouting, blossoming, fructifying, and the disappearance of every tree, animal, man, star, and god.
All Earth is a seed planted in the coils of my mind. Whatever struggles for numberless years to unfold and fructify in the dark womb of matter bursts in my head like a small and silent lightning flash.
Ah! let us gaze intently on this lightning flash, let us hold it for a moment, let us arrange it into human speech.
Let us transfix this momentary eternity which encloses everything, past and future, but without losing in the immobility of language any of its gigantic erotic whirling.

Eric Temple Bell photo

“Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth”

Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) mathematician and science fiction author born in Scotland who lived in the United States for most of his li…

Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 291
Context: Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth; some of its rivals do. That science is in some respects inhuman may be the secret of its success in alleviating human misery and mitigating human stupidity.

Ridley Scott photo

“I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith.”

Ridley Scott (1937) English film director and film producer

Esquire interview (2012)
Context: I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith. I don't care who you are, it's what we all think about. It's in the back of all our minds.

Martha Graham photo
Samuel Butler photo

“There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

The Individual and the World
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part I - Lord, What is Man?
Context: There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. The individual will not so much care how much he may suffer in this world provided he can live in men’s good thoughts long after he has left it. The world at large does not so much care how much suffering the individual may either endure or cause in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of men’s thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it.

Thomas Carlyle photo

“Your born genius, therefore, will first have to ask himself, Whether he can hold his tongue or cannot? True, all human talent, especially all deep talent, is a talent to do, and is intrinsically of silent nature; inaudible, like the Sphere Harmonies and Eternal Melodies, of which it is an incarnated fraction.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)
Context: Our English careers to born genius are twofold. There is the silent or unlearned career of the Industrialisms, which are very many among us; and there is the articulate or learned career of the three professions, Medicine, Law (under which we may include Politics), and the Church. Your born genius, therefore, will first have to ask himself, Whether he can hold his tongue or cannot? True, all human talent, especially all deep talent, is a talent to do, and is intrinsically of silent nature; inaudible, like the Sphere Harmonies and Eternal Melodies, of which it is an incarnated fraction.

Erwin Schrödinger photo

“No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors … This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore

Henry Adams photo

“The scientific mind is atrophied, and suffers under inherited cerebral weakness, when it comes in contact with the eternal woman,— Astarte, Isis, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the last and greatest deity of all, the Virgin.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: p>The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, studied in the pure light of political economy, are insane. The scientific mind is atrophied, and suffers under inherited cerebral weakness, when it comes in contact with the eternal woman,— Astarte, Isis, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the last and greatest deity of all, the Virgin. Very rarely one lingers, with a mild sympathy, such as suits the patient student of human error, willing to be interested in what he cannot understand. Still more rarely, owing to some revival of archaic instincts, he rediscovers the woman. This is perhaps the mark of the artist alone, and his solitary privilege. The rest of us cannot feel; we can only study. The proper study of mankind is woman, and, by common agreement since the time of Adam, it is the most complex and arduous. The study of Our Lady, as shown by the art of Chartres, leads directly back to Eve, and lays bare the whole subject of sex.If it were worthwhile to argue a paradox, one might maintain that nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the superfluity of her world.</p

Sri Aurobindo photo

“This is the Sanatan Dharma, this is the eternal religion which you did not really know before, but which I have now revealed to you. The agnostic and the sceptic in you have been answered, for I have given you proofs within and without you, physical and subjective, which have satisfied you. When you go forth, speak to your nation always this word, that it is for the Sanatan Dharma that they arise, it is for the world and not for themselves that they arise. I am giving them freedom for the service of the world.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Uttarpara Address (1909)
Context: The second message came and it said, "Something has been shown to you in this year of seclusion, something about which you had your doubts and it is the truth of the Hindu religion. It is this religion that I am raising up before the world, it is this that I have perfected and developed through the Rishis, saints and Avatars, and now it is going forth to do my work among the nations. I am raising up this nation to send forth my word. This is the Sanatan Dharma, this is the eternal religion which you did not really know before, but which I have now revealed to you. The agnostic and the sceptic in you have been answered, for I have given you proofs within and without you, physical and subjective, which have satisfied you. When you go forth, speak to your nation always this word, that it is for the Sanatan Dharma that they arise, it is for the world and not for themselves that they arise. I am giving them freedom for the service of the world. When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists. To magnify the religion means to magnify the country. I have shown you that I am everywhere and in all men and in all things, that I am in this movement and I am not only working in those who are striving for the country but I am working also in those who oppose them and stand in their path. I am working in everybody and whatever men may think or do, they can do nothing but help in my purpose. They also are doing my work, they are not my enemies but my instruments. In all your actions you are moving forward without knowing which way you move. You mean to do one thing and you do another. You aim at a result and your efforts subserve one that is different or contrary. It is Shakti that has gone forth and entered into the people. Since long ago I have been preparing this uprising and now the time has come and it is I who will lead it to its fulfilment."

James Anthony Froude photo

“Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.”

James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine

"The Science of History", (5 February 1864); lecture published in Representative Essays (1885) by George Haven Putnam, p. 274; Lord Acton quoted the first sentence of this statement in an address "The Study Of History" (11 June 1895) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1906acton.html, and it has often since been misattributed to him. The phrase has also sometimes been misquoted as: Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
Context: Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last.

John Hancock photo

“Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.”

John Hancock (1737–1793) American Patriot and statesman during the American Revolution (1737–1793)

Boston Massacre Oration (1774)
Context: I have always, from my earliest youth, rejoiced in the felicity of my fellow-men; and have ever considered it as the indispensable able duty of every member of society to promote, as far as in him lies, the prosperity of every individual, but more especially of the community to which he belongs; and also, as a faithful subject of the State, to use his utmost endeavors to detect, and having detected, strenuously to oppose every traitorous plot which its enemies may devise for its destruction. Security to the persons and properties of the governed is so obviously the design and end of civil government, that to attempt a logical proof of it would be like burning tapers at noonday, to assist the sun in enlightening the world; and it cannot be either virtuous or honorable to attempt to support a government of which this is not the great and principal basis; and it is to the last degree vicious and infamous to attempt to support a government which manifestly tends to render the persons and properties of the governed insecure. Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.

John Byrom photo

“Th' Eternal Mind, ev'n Heathens understood,
Was Infinitely Powerful, Wise, and Good.”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

The True Grounds Of Eternal And Immutable Rectitude" St. 1 <!-- p. 128 -->
Miscellaneous Poems (1773)
Context: Th' Eternal Mind, ev'n Heathens understood,
Was Infinitely Powerful, Wise, and Good.
In their Conceptions, who conceiv'd aright,
These Three Essential Attributes unite.
They saw that, wanting any of the Three,
Such an All-perfect Being could not be.

“To the everlasting glory of those few men blessed and sanctified in the curses and execrations of those many whose praise is eternal damnation.”

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988) English composer, music critic, pianist and writer

Dedication to the score of Opus clavicembalisticum (p. 3).

Julie Taymor photo

“Joy is deeper than sorrow, for all joy seeks eternity.”

Julie Taymor (1952) American film and theatre director

Academy of Achievement interview (2006)
Context: In our culture, we think that happy and color is trivial, that black and darkness is deeper. But Nietzsche said — which is a line that I firmly believe — "Joy is deeper than sorrow, for all joy seeks eternity." And if you see Grendel, you'll see, as he's on the edge of the abyss, ready to leap to his death, he sings, "Is it joy I feel? Is it joy I feel?" And it's so, so moving. You can have a lot of different explanations for the ending of that opera, but there is something so palpable that you will feel when he sings those lines.

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn't is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it's truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic's vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom."”

Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 13
Context: "Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But it's ill talking of such questions."
"Because they are too terrible, Sir?"
"No. Because all answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it. But if ye are trying to leap on into Eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see — small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope — something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn't is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it's truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic's vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom."

Joel Barlow photo

“First stretch thy arm, and with less impious might,
Wipe out the stars, and quench the solar light :
“For heav'n and earth," the voice of God ordains,
“Shall pass and perish, but my word remains,"
Th' eternal Word, which gave, in spite of thee,
Reason to man, that bids the man be free.”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)
Context: And didst thou hope, by thy infuriate quill
To rouse mankind the blood of realms to spill?
Then to restore, on death devoted plains,
Their scourge to tyrants, and to man his chains?
To swell their souls with thy own bigot rage,
And blot the glories of so bright an age?
First stretch thy arm, and with less impious might,
Wipe out the stars, and quench the solar light :
“For heav'n and earth," the voice of God ordains,
“Shall pass and perish, but my word remains,"
Th' eternal Word, which gave, in spite of thee,
Reason to man, that bids the man be free.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the tomb. He never threatened to punish the dead; and there is not one word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse of Malachi, containing the slightest intimation that God will take his revenge in another world. It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the doctrine of eternal pain.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Some Reasons Why (1881)
Context: My great objection to the Old Testament is the cruelty said to have been commanded by God. All these cruelties ceased with death. The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the tomb. He never threatened to punish the dead; and there is not one word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse of Malachi, containing the slightest intimation that God will take his revenge in another world. It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the doctrine of eternal pain. The teacher of universal benevolence rent the veil between time and eternity, and fixed the horrified gaze of man upon the lurid gulf of hell. Within the breast of non-resistance coiled the worm that never dies. Compared with this, the doctrine of slavery, the wars of extermination, the curses, the punishments of the Old Testament were all merciful and just.

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy Of Religion (1951), Ch. 26 : The Pious Man; Our Destiny is to Aid
Context: The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no 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.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Any religion that is completely earthbound sells its birthright for a mess of naturalistic pottage. Religion at its best, deals not only with man's preliminary concerns but with his inescapable ultimate concern. When religion overlooks this basic fact it is reduced to a mere ethical system in which eternity is absorbed into time and God is relegated to a sort of meaningless figment of the human imagination. But a religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions. Religion deals with both earth and heaven, both time and eternity. Religion operates not only on the vertical plane but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to integrate men with God but to integrate men with men and each man with himself.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: Stride Toward Freedom (1958), pp. 28-29, New York: Ballantine Books,
Context: "The apparent apathy of the Negro ministers presented a special problem. A faithful few had always shown a deep concern for social problems, but too many had remained aloof from the area of social responsibility. Much of this indifference, it is true, stemmed from a sincere feeling that ministers were not supposed to get mixed up in such earthly, temporal matters as social and economic improvement; they were to "preach the gospel" and keep men's minds centered on "the heavenly." But however sincere, this view of religion, I felt, was too confined.
Certainly, otherworldly concerns have a deep and significant place in all religions worthy of the name. Any religion that is completely earthbound sells its birthright for a mess of naturalistic pottage. Religion at its best, deals not only with man's preliminary concerns but with his inescapable ultimate concern. When religion overlooks this basic fact it is reduced to a mere ethical system in which eternity is absorbed into time and God is relegated to a sort of meaningless figment of the human imagination. But a religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions. Religion deals with both earth and heaven, both time and eternity. Religion operates not only on the vertical plane but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to integrate men with God but to integrate men with men and each man with himself.
This means, at bottom, that the Christian Gospel is a two-way road. On the one hand, it seeks to change the souls of men, and thereby unite them with God; on the other hand, it seek to change the environmental conditions of men so that soul will have a chance after it is changed.
Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion. Such a religion is the kind the Marxists like to see - an opiate of the people.

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“He whose soul is charged with awareness of God earns his inner livelihood by a passionate desire to pour his life into the eternal wells of love. … We do not live for our own sake. Life would be preposterous if not for the love it confers.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: He whose soul is charged with awareness of God earns his inner livelihood by a passionate desire to pour his life into the eternal wells of love. … We do not live for our own sake. Life would be preposterous if not for the love it confers.
Faith implies no denial of evil, no disregard of danger, no whitewashing of the abominable. He whose heart is given to faith is mindful of the obstructive and awry, of the sinister and pernicious. It is God's strange dominion over both good and evil on which he relies. … Faith is not a mechanical insurance but a dynamic, personal act, flowing between the heart of man and the love of God.

Samuel Adams photo

“If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

The Rights of the Colonists (1772)
Context: Government was instituted for the purposes of common defence … In short, it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men … to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

John Ruysbroeck photo

“So the wise man will do like the bee, and he will fly forth with attention and with reason and with discretion, towards all those gifts and towards all that sweetness which he has ever experienced, and towards all the good which God has ever done to him. And in the light of love and with inward observation, he will taste of the multitude of consolations and good things; and will not rest upon any flower of the gifts of God, but, laden with gratitude and praise, will fly back into the unity, wherein he wishes to rest and to dwell eternally with God”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)
Context: You should watch the wise bee and do as it does. It dwells in unity, in the congregation of its fellows, and goes forth, not in the storm, but in calm and still weather, in the sunshine, towards all those flowers in which sweetness may be found. It does not rest on any flower, neither on any beauty nor on any sweetness; but it draws from them honey and wax, that is to say, sweetness and light-giving matter, and brings both to the unity of the hive, that therewith it may produce fruits, and be greatly profitable. Christ, the Eternal Sun, shining into the open heart, causes that heart to grow and to bloom, and it overflows with all the inward powers with joy and sweetness. So the wise man will do like the bee, and he will fly forth with attention and with reason and with discretion, towards all those gifts and towards all that sweetness which he has ever experienced, and towards all the good which God has ever done to him. And in the light of love and with inward observation, he will taste of the multitude of consolations and good things; and will not rest upon any flower of the gifts of God, but, laden with gratitude and praise, will fly back into the unity, wherein he wishes to rest and to dwell eternally with God.

Aldous Huxley photo

“Because machines could be made progressively more and more efficient, Western man came to believe that men and societies would automatically register a corresponding moral and spiritual improvement. Attention and allegiance came to be paid, not to Eternity, but to the Utopian future.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (1944)
Context: Because machines could be made progressively more and more efficient, Western man came to believe that men and societies would automatically register a corresponding moral and spiritual improvement. Attention and allegiance came to be paid, not to Eternity, but to the Utopian future. External circumstances came to be regarded as more important than states of mind about external circumstances, and the end of human life was held to be action, with contemplation as a means to that end. These false and historically, aberrant and heretical doctrines are now systematically taught in our schools and repeated, day in, day out, by those anonymous writers of advertising copy who, more than any other teachers, provide European and American adults with their current philosophy of life. And so effective has been the propaganda that even professing Christians accept the heresy unquestioningly and are quite unconscious of its complete incompatibility with their own or anybody else’s religion.

Leo Tolstoy photo

“Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.”

Bk. IX, ch. 1
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)
Context: In historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

Cyrano de Bergerac photo

“Even the least wise would not take offense if some uncouth man insulted him as long as the man hadn't intended to, or had mistaken him for someone else, or wine had loosened his tongue. All the more reason then to ask: will God, who is all-imperturbable, get mad at us for not having recognized Him when He, himself, has denied us the means of knowing Him?
"But by all you believe, my little animal, if belief in God were so necessary and were of eternal importance to us, would God himself not infuse in everyone enlightenment as bright as the Sun, which hides from no one?”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)
Context: "I ask you only why you find the belief inconvenient. I'm quite sure you can find no reason. Since it can only be useful, why do you not let yourself be persuaded? If God exists and you don't believe in Him, you will have made a mistake and disobeyed the commandment to believe in Him. If there is no God, you won't be any better off than the rest of us."
"Oh yes I will be better off than you," he answered, "because if there is no God, the game is tied. But, on the contrary, if there is one, I can't have offended something I thought did not exist. Sin requires knowing or willing. Don't you see? Even the least wise would not take offense if some uncouth man insulted him as long as the man hadn't intended to, or had mistaken him for someone else, or wine had loosened his tongue. All the more reason then to ask: will God, who is all-imperturbable, get mad at us for not having recognized Him when He, himself, has denied us the means of knowing Him?
"But by all you believe, my little animal, if belief in God were so necessary and were of eternal importance to us, would God himself not infuse in everyone enlightenment as bright as the Sun, which hides from no one? Do we pretend that God wants to play hide-and-seek with us, like children calling 'Peekaboo, I see you!'? Does God put on a mask and then take it off? Does He disguise himself to some and reveal himself to others? That would be a God who is either silly or malicious.

Sri Aurobindo photo

“This Sanatana Dharma has many scriptures: The Veda, the Vedanta, the Gita, the Upanishads, the Darshanas, the Puranas, the Tantras, nor could it reject the Bible or the Koran, but its real, the most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has his dwelling.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Ideal of the Karmayogin (1921), p. 9
Context: Hinduism, which is the most skeptical and the most believing of all, the most skeptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and [future]] social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced, turning in to the soul's uses, in this Hinduism, we find the basis of future world religion. This Sanatana Dharma has many scriptures: The Veda, the Vedanta, the Gita, the Upanishads, the Darshanas, the Puranas, the Tantras, nor could it reject the Bible or the Koran, but its real, the most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has his dwelling.

Karl Barth photo

“Eternity is here (in the stable at Bethlehem and on the cross of Calvary) in time.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

The Knowledge of God and the Service of God (1939), p. 78

Henry Suso photo

“Here to lose oneself forever is eternal happiness.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Life of the Servant
Context: In the darkness beyond distinct manner of existing, all multiplicity disappears and the spirit loses what is its own. It disappears with regard to its own activity. This is the highest goal and the 'where' beyond boundaries. In this the spirituality of all spirits ends. Here to lose oneself forever is eternal happiness. To lose oneself forever is eternal happiness

Buckminster Fuller photo

“There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and noninterfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)
Context: There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and noninterfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal. Principles never contradict principles.... The synergetic integral of the totality of principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, because as humans — in pure principle — we do not and never will know all the principles.

George Bancroft photo

“They speak falsely who say that truth is the daughter of time; it is the child of eternity, and as old as the Divine mind.”

George Bancroft (1800–1891) American historian and statesman

Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855), The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promise of the Progress of the Human Race (1854)
Context: No science has been reached, no thought generated, no truth discovered, which has not from all time existed potentially in every human mind. The belief in the progress of the race does not, therefore, spring from the supposed possibility of his acquiring new faculties, or coming into the possession of a new nature.
Still less does truth vary. They speak falsely who say that truth is the daughter of time; it is the child of eternity, and as old as the Divine mind. The perception of it takes place in the order of time; truth itself knows nothing of the succession of ages. Neither does morality need to perfect itself; it is what it always has been, and always will be. Its distinctions are older than the sea or the dry land, than the earth or the sun. The relation of good to evil is from the beginning, and is unalterable.

George William Curtis photo

“You say you are tired of the eternal Negro. Very well, stop trying to turn a man into a thing because he happens to be black, and you'll stop our mouths at the same time. But while you keep at your work, be perfectly sure that we shall keep at ours. If you are up at five o'clock, we shall be up at four. We shall agitate, agitate, agitate, until the Supreme Court, obeying the popular will, proclaims that all men have original equal rights which government did not give and cannot justly take away”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)
Context: This negative doctrine of Mr. Douglas that there are no rights anterior to governments is the end of free society. If the majority of a political community have a right to establish slavery if they think it for their interest, they have the same right to declare who shall be enslaved. The doctrine simply substitutes the despotic, irresponsible tyranny of many for that of one. If the majority shall choose that the interest of the State requires the slaughter of all infants born lame, of all persons more than seventy years of age, they have the right to slaughter them, according to what is called the Democratic doctrine. Do you think this a ludicrous and extreme case? But if the majority have a right to deprive a man of his liberty at their pleasure, they have an equal right to take his life. For life is no more a natural right than liberty. The individual citizen, according to Mr. Douglas, is not secure in his person, in his property, in his family, for a single moment from the whim or the passion or the deliberate will of the majority, if expressed as law. Might is not right. I have the power to hold a child by the throat until he turns purple and dies. But I have not the right to do it. A State or a Territory has the power to steal a man's liberty or labor, and to hold him and his children's children forever in slavery. It has the power to do this to any man of any color, of any age, of any country, who is not strong enough to protect himself. But it has no more right to do it to an African than to an American or an Irishman, no more right to do it to the most ignorant and forsaken foreigner than to the prosperous and honored citizen of its own country. We are going to do what Patrick Henry did in Virginia, what James Otis and Samuel Adams did in Massachusetts, what the Sons of Liberty did in New York, ninety years ago. We are going to agitate, agitate, agitate. You say you want to rest. Very well, so do we — and don't blame us if you stuff your pillow with thorns. You say you are tired of the eternal Negro. Very well, stop trying to turn a man into a thing because he happens to be black, and you'll stop our mouths at the same time. But while you keep at your work, be perfectly sure that we shall keep at ours. If you are up at five o'clock, we shall be up at four. We shall agitate, agitate, agitate, until the Supreme Court, obeying the popular will, proclaims that all men have original equal rights which government did not give and cannot justly take away.

Emily Brontë photo

“With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

No Coward Soul Is Mine (1846)
Context: p>With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.Though earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee. There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou — Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.</p

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“May not the absolute and perfect eternal happiness be an eternal hope, which would die if it were realized? Is it possible to be happy without hope? And there is no place for hope once possession has been realized, for hope, desire, is killed by possession.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis
Context: May not the absolute and perfect eternal happiness be an eternal hope, which would die if it were realized? Is it possible to be happy without hope? And there is no place for hope once possession has been realized, for hope, desire, is killed by possession. May it not be, I say, that all souls grow without ceasing, some in a greater measure than others, but all having to pass some time through the same degree of growth, whatever that degree may be, and yet without ever arriving at the infinite, at God, to whom they continually approach? Is not eternal happiness an eternal hope, with its eternal nucleus of sorrow in order that happiness shall not be swallowed up in nothingness?

Johan Falkberget photo

“It was as if he sat in cross currents from many eternities — some with a grey cold light over them, others completely in darkness.”

Johan Falkberget (1879–1967) Norwegian politician

The Fourth Night Watch (1923)
Context: It was as if he sat in cross currents from many eternities — some with a grey cold light over them, others completely in darkness. Was it the agony of Gethsemane? The disintegration of his body was in full swing. He remained sitting there, remembering something he had experienced one night last winter. It seemed to him that the great silence, which only comes when a human being has drawn his last breath, enveloped him. And suddenly Kathryn was standing beside his bed. She took his hand in hers and smiled sadly. "Do you wish, Husband, that I shall pray for you, that you may still live?" she asked. "Here, from where I now am, it is not such a long way to God as from the place where you are." Her voice was without reproach, and all fear and suffering had left her face.
"Oh, my dear," he had said. "Do not intervene in the wise counsels of God. Don't you hate me, Kathryn?"
She smiled again. "There is no hate here. No, Husband, I love you more dearly now than when I lived — but it is with another love, a love purified of all self-love." But he couldn't quite decide whether this was a dream or a vision. Now, when his earthly happiness was in ruins, his spirit became more and more liberated. The eyes of his soul had the land of Canaan in sight. He had come closer now. He noticed it in so many things.

John Buchan photo

“By a principle I mean something that is an eternal and universal truth.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

"A University's Bequest to Youth" (10 October 1936)
Canadian Occasions (1940)
Context: To-day we have fewer dogmas, but I think that we have stronger principles. By a dogma I mean a deduction from facts which is only valid under certain conditions, and which becomes untrue if those conditions change. By a principle I mean something that is an eternal and universal truth.

“I cannot reach it, and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity.”

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet

"Childhood".
Silex Scintillans (1655)
Context: I cannot reach it, and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity. Were now that chronicle alive,
Those white designs which children drive,
And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
With their content too in my pow'r,
Quickly would I make my path even,
And by mere playing go to heaven.

Lucy Stone photo

“They are part of the eternal order, and they have come to stay. Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)
Context: By what toil and fatigue and patience and strife and the beautiful law of growth has all this been wrought? These things have not come of themselves. They could not have occurred except as the great movement for women has brought them out and about. They are part of the eternal order, and they have come to stay. Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things.

William T. Sherman photo

“If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

Letter to Major R.M. Sawyer https://books.google.com/books?id=KZAtAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=%22If+they+want+eternal+war%22&source=bl&ots=hqqkcQXgYR&sig=op8FljMWJcliz6HsZRrfGO9ShJs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx38jz5KrKAhVHMz4KHbleCckQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=%22If%20they%20want%20eternal%20war%22&f=false (31 January 1864), from Vicksburg.
1860s, 1864, Letter to R.M. Sawyer (January 1864)
Context: p>If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago by a little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late.All the powers of earth cannot restore to them their slaves, any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too, and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences. Many, many peoples with less pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence.</p

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“The third element is the present, yet it is only the limited present, not the eternal present”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Vol 3 Translated from the 2d German ed. 1895 Ebenezer Brown Speirs 1854-1900, and J Burdon Sanderson P. 3
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 3
Context: In the first element God is beyond time, as the eternal Idea, existing in the element of eternity in so far as eternity is contrasted with time. Thus time in this complete and independent form, time in-and-for-self, unfolds itself and breaks up into past, present, and future. Thus the divine history in its second stage as appearance is regarded as the past, it is, it has Being, but it is Being which is degraded to a mere semblance. In taking on the form of appearance it is immediate existence, which is at the same time negated, and this is the past. The divine history is thus regarded as something past, as representing the Historical properly so called. The third element is the present, yet it is only the limited present, not the eternal present, but rather the present which distinguishes itself from the past and future, and represents the element of feeling, of the immediate subjectivity of spiritual Being which is now.

Jean Ingelow photo

“All night, all day, He waits sublime,
Until the fulness of the time
Decreed from His eternity.”

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer

"Scholar and Carpenter", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Context: p>The while He sits whose name is Love,
And waits, as Noah did, for the dove,
To wit if she would fly to him.He waits for us, while, houseless things,
We beat about with bruised wings
On the dark floods and water-springs,
The ruined world, the desolate sea;
With open windows from the prime
All night, all day, He waits sublime,
Until the fulness of the time
Decreed from His eternity.</p

“My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.”

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet

"The Retreat," l. 7 - 19.
Silex Scintillans (1655)
Context: When yet I had not walk'd above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back, at that short space
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.

Erwin Schrödinger photo

“Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you … For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

"The Mystic Vision" as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
Context: It is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings. But not in this sense — that you are a part, a piece, of an eternal, infinite being, an aspect or modification of it... For we should then have the same baffling question: which part, which aspect are you? what, objectively, differentiates it from the others? No, but, inconceiveable as it seems to ordinary reason, you — and all other conscious beings as such — are all in all. Hence, this life of yours... is, in a certain sense, the whole... This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula... 'Tat tvam asi' — this is you. Or, again, in such words as 'I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world.'
Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you … For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“There is no “how to drop it”, because that is only another form of continuity. To drop opinion, belief, attachment, greed, or envy is to die — to die every day, every moment. If there is the coming to an end of all ambition from moment to moment, then you will know the extraordinary state of being nothing, of coming to the abyss of an eternal movement, as it were, and dropping over the edge — which is death.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. XI, p. 242
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: When death comes, it does not ask your permission; it comes and takes you; it destroys you on the spot. In the same way, can you totally drop hate, envy, pride of possession, attachment to beliefs, to opinions, to ideas, to a particular way of thinking? Can you drop all that in an instant? There is no “how to drop it”, because that is only another form of continuity. To drop opinion, belief, attachment, greed, or envy is to die — to die every day, every moment. If there is the coming to an end of all ambition from moment to moment, then you will know the extraordinary state of being nothing, of coming to the abyss of an eternal movement, as it were, and dropping over the edge — which is death. I want to know all about death, because death may be reality; it may be what we call God — that most extraordinary something that lives and moves and yet has no beginning and no end.

Eliezer Yudkowsky photo

“The grass is always greener on the other side of reality. Which is rather setting ourselves up for eternal disappointment, eh? If we cannot take joy in the merely real, our lives shall be empty indeed.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

The summary of the Joy In The Merely Real sequence (October 2009) http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Joy_in_the_Merely_Real
Context: If dragons were common, and you could look at one in the zoo — but zebras were a rare legendary creature that had finally been decided to be mythical — then there's a certain sort of person who would ignore dragons, who would never bother to look at dragons, and chase after rumors of zebras. The grass is always greener on the other side of reality. Which is rather setting ourselves up for eternal disappointment, eh? If we cannot take joy in the merely real, our lives shall be empty indeed.

George Gordon Byron photo

“The wretched gift eternity
Was thine — and thou hast borne it well.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

II.
Prometheus (1816)
Context: Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity
Was thine — and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor, his life for love, knowing that contentment is the shadow not the light. The great yearning that sweeps eternity is a yearning to praise, a yearning to serve.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy Of Religion (1951), Ch. 24 : The Great Yearning; The Yearning for Spiritual Living<!-- p. 259 -->
Context: He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor, his life for love, knowing that contentment is the shadow not the light. The great yearning that sweeps eternity is a yearning to praise, a yearning to serve. And when the waves of that yearning swell in our souls all the barriers are pushed aside: the crust of callousness, the hysteria of vanity, the orgies of arrogance. For it is not the I that trembles alone, it is not a stir out of my soul but an eternal flutter that sweeps us all. No code, no law, even the law of God, can set a pattern for all of our living. It is not enough to have the right ideas. For the will, not reason, has the executive power in the realm of living. The will is stronger than reason and does not blindly submit to the dictates of rational principles. Reason may force the mind to accept intellectually its conclusions. Yet what is the power that will make me love to do what I ought to do?

Lucy Larcom photo

“Eternal life and eternal death; what do these words mean?”

Lucy Larcom (1824–1893) American teacher, poet, author

Journal entry (2 March 1861), Ch. 5 : The Beginning of the War.
Lucy Larcom : Life, Letters, and Diary (1895)
Context: Eternal life and eternal death; what do these words mean? This is the question that comes up again and again. It has recently been brought up by those whom I am appointed to instruct; and the question with its answer, brings new and fearful responsibility with every return. I am more and more convinced that the idea of duration is not the one that affects us most: for here it has proved that those who are least careful about what they are in heart and life, are trying hardest to convince themselves and others that the "doctrine of eternal punishment" is not true. By making themselves believe that to be the all-important question, they draw off their own and others' attention from the really momentous one, — "Am I living the eternal life? Is it begun in me now?"
And now I see why I have questioned whether it was right in me to express my own doubts of this very doctrine. The final renovation of all souls, their restoration to life in holiness and love, is certainly a hope of mine that is not without a strong infusion of confidence; but I dare not say it is a belief; because both reason and revelation have left it in deep mystery; and the expression of any such belief does not seem to me likely to help others much; certainly not those who are indolent or indifferent regarding the true Christian life.
Then the "loss of the soul" is in plain language spoken of by our Lord as possible. What can that mean, but the loss of life in Him? the loss of ennobling aspirations, of the love of all good, of the power of seeing and seeking truth? And if this is possible to us now, by our own choice, why not forever? — since, as free beings, our choice must always be in our own power?
The truth that we must all keep before us, in order to be growing better forever, is that life is love and holiness; death, selfishness and sin; then it is a question of life and death to be grappled with in the deep places of every soul.

George Bernard Shaw photo

“You, standing for Rome, are the universal coward: I, standing for the kingdom of God, have braved everything, lost everything, and won an eternal crown.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Jesus, as portrayed in Preface, Difference Between Reader And Spectator
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)
Context: The kingdom of God is striving to come. The empire that looks back in terror shall give way to the kingdom that looks forward with hope. Terror drives men mad: hope and faith give them divine wisdom. The men whom you fill with fear will stick at no evil and perish in their sin: the men whom I fill with faith shall inherit the earth. I say to you Cast out fear. Speak no more vain things to me about the greatness of Rome. … You, standing for Rome, are the universal coward: I, standing for the kingdom of God, have braved everything, lost everything, and won an eternal crown.

John Byrom photo

“From the Divine, Eternal Spirit springs
Order and Rule and Rectitude of Things,
Thro' outward Nature, His Apparent Throne,
Visibly seen, intelligibly known, —
Proofs of a Boundless Pow'r, a Wisdom's Aid,
By Goodness us'd, Eternal and Unmade.”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

The True Grounds Of Eternal And Immutable Rectitude" St. 6
Miscellaneous Poems (1773)

Báb photo

“Denounce ye not one another, ere the Day-Star of ancient eternity shineth forth above the horizon of His sublimity.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVI, 19
The Kitáb-I-Asmá
Context: O ye that are invested with the Bayán! Denounce ye not one another, ere the Day-Star of ancient eternity shineth forth above the horizon of His sublimity. We have created you from one tree and have caused you to be as the leaves and fruit of the same tree, that haply ye may become a source of comfort to one another. Regard ye not others save as ye regard your own selves, that no feeling of aversion may prevail amongst you so as to shut you out from Him Whom God shall make manifest on the Day of Resurrection. It behooveth you all to be one indivisible people; thus should ye return unto Him Whom God shall make manifest.

Epictetus photo

“For I am not Eternity, but a human being—a part of the whole, as an hour is part of the day. I must come like the hour, and like the hour must pass!”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: It is hard to combine and unite these two qualities, the carefulness of one who is affected by circumstances, and the intrepidity of one who heeds them not. But it is not impossible: else were happiness also impossible. We should act as we do in seafaring: “What can I do?”—Choose the master, the crew, the day, the opportunity. Then comes a sudden storm. What matters it to me? my part has been fully done. The matter is in the hands of another—the Master of the ship. The ship is foundering. What then have I to do? I do the only thing that remains to me—to be drowned without fear, without a cry, without upbraiding God, but knowing that what has been born must likewise perish. For I am not Eternity, but a human being—a part of the whole, as an hour is part of the day. I must come like the hour, and like the hour must pass! (186).

James Branch Cabell photo

“Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal,
And changes not; —”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"To Robert Gamble Cabell II: In Dedication of The Certain Hour"
The Certain Hour (1916)
Context: Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over;
One thing unshaken stays:
Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover;
Whereby decays
Each thing save one thing: — mid this strife diurnal
Of hourly change begot,
Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal,
And changes not; — Nor means a tinseled dream pursuing lovers
Find altered by-and-bye,
When, with possession, time anon discovers
Trapped dreams must die, —
For he that visions God, of mankind gathers
One manlike trait alone,
And reverently imputes to Him a father's
Love for his son.

Joseph Addison photo
Julian (emperor) photo

“Men's works also are naturally perishable and mutable and subject to every kind of alteration. But since God is eternal, it follows that of such sort are his ordinances also.”

Against the Galilaeans (c. 362)
Context: Men's works also are naturally perishable and mutable and subject to every kind of alteration. But since God is eternal, it follows that of such sort are his ordinances also. And since they are such, they are either the natures of things or are accordant with the nature of things. For how could nature be at variance with the ordinance of God? How could it fall out of harmony therewith?

John Adams photo

“I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to François Adriaan van der Kemp (16 February 1809)
1800s
Context: I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.

Meher Baba photo

“I am never silent. I speak eternally.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

"I Speak Eternally" http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/ispeak.html in Love Alone Prevails (1981) by Kitty Davy, p. 166, 179.
General sources
Context: External silence helps to achieve inner Silence, and only in internal Silence is Baba found — in profound inner Silence. I am never silent. I speak eternally. The voice that is heard deep within the soul is My voice — the voice of inspiration, of intuition, of guidance. Through those who are receptive to this voice, I speak.

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney photo

“Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land. Thus the little minutes,
Humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages
Of eternity.”

"Little Things" in the Myrtle (1845). This poem came to be published uncredited as a children's rhyme and hymn in many 19th century magazines and books, sometimes becoming variously attributed to Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, Daniel Clement Colesworthy, and Frances S. Osgood, but the earliest publications of it clearly are those of Carney, according to Our Woman Workers: Biographical Sketches of Women Eminent in the Universalist Church for Literary, Philanthropic and Christian Work (1881) by E. R. Hanson, as well as Familiar Quotations 9th edition (1906) edited by John Bartlett, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) by Elizabeth Knowles and Angela Partington, and The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), ed. Fred R. Shapiro.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)
Context: The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor.... It has darkened the lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed men to fiends and banished reason from the brain. Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in every orthodox creed. It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite of malice, hatred, and revenge. Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo
François-René de Chateaubriand photo

“I behold the light of a dawn whose sunrise I shall never see. It only remains for me to sit down at the edge of my grave; then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, into eternity.”

Book XLII: Ch. 18: A summary of the changes which have occurred around the globe in my lifetime
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)
Context: New storms will arise; one can believe in calamities to come which will surpass the afflictions we have been overwhelmed by in the past; already, men are thinking of bandaging their old wounds to return to the battlefield. However, I do not expect an imminent outbreak of war: nations and kings are equally weary; unforeseen catastrophe will not yet fall on France: what follows me will only be the effect of general transformation. No doubt there will be painful moments: the face of the world cannot change without suffering. But, once again, there will be no separate revolutions; simply the great revolution approaching its end. The scenes of tomorrow no longer concern me; they call for other artists: your turn, gentlemen!
As I write these last words, my window, which looks west over the gardens of the Foreign Mission, is open: it is six in the morning; I can see the pale and swollen moon; it is sinking over the spire of the Invalides, scarcely touched by the first golden glow from the East; one might say that the old world was ending, and the new beginning. I behold the light of a dawn whose sunrise I shall never see. It only remains for me to sit down at the edge of my grave; then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, into eternity.

Karl Barth photo

“In Jesus, God really becomes a mystery, makes himself known as the unknown, speaks as the eternally Silent One.”

The Epistle to the Romans (1918; 1921)
Context: The revelation in Jesus, just because it is the revelation of the righteousness of God is at the same time the strongest conceivable veiling and unknowableness of God. In Jesus, God really becomes a mystery, makes himself known as the unknown, speaks as the eternally Silent One.<!-- p. 73

Wilhelm Reich photo

“No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Response to FDA complaint (1954)
Context: No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural. This is valid, no matter whether we speak in terms such as "God," "Natural Law," "Cosmic Primordial Force," "Ether" or "Cosmic Orgone Energy."

Boris Yeltsin photo

“I am convinced that the moment is coming when, with its message of eternal, universal values, it will come to the aid of our society.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

On the renewal of the Christian church in Russia, p. 251
1990s, Against the Grain (1990)
Context: I am convinced that the moment is coming when, with its message of eternal, universal values, it will come to the aid of our society. For in these words: "Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," lie those very moral principles that will enable us to survive even the most critical situations.