Quotes about eternity
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“I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity”

Jerzy Kosiński (1933–1991) Novelist

Sleep

“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours”

Eric Berne book Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships

Source: Games People Play

Problem

“Nothing truly real is forgotten eternally, because everything real comes from eternity and goes to eternity.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Source: The Eternal Now

“On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Star, Spring, Night

“In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horizon with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Flowers

“When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Love, Soul, Mountain, Star

“undying grattitude?" Simon looked at me. " Cool. Dosethat come with eternal servitude? if so, i like my eggs sunnyside up."
i smiled," i'll remember that.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Smile

“Every night death came, slowly, painfully, and every morning Maddox awoke in bed, knowing he'd have to die again later. That was his greatest curse and his eternal punishment.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

Death, Night

“No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

God, Dreams, Search, Suffering

“I'd like to say I took the news well.
The truth was, I wanted to strangle the Hunters of Artemis one eternal maiden at a time.
--Percy Jackson”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Truth, Time

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Drink, Fish, Time

“Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Time

“If you are killing time, are you damaging eternity?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Time

“Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?”

D.T. Suzuki (1870–1966) Japanese author and philosopher

Source: Zen and Japanese Culture

Universe, Time, Tea

“Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the wingèd life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

No. 1, He Who Binds
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792), Several Questions Answered

Life, Kiss, Joy

“In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Source: Spinoza in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte

“Measured against eternity, our time on earth is just a blink of an eye, but the consequences of it will last forever.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Time

“Go where we may, rest where we will,
Eternal London haunts us still.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

“So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, "There is enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue." There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Apostle Paul, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls "the image of God," you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.

Nature, Evil

“When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

God, Happiness, Suffering

“I'll ride my bike all the stinkin' way to school for the rest of eternity if it means being with her.

-Bryce”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

School, Way

“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Youth, Beauty, Freedom, Indecision

“Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.”

Alice Hoffman book The Dovekeepers

Source: The Dovekeepers

Secret, Way, Daughters, For Mother

“Eternity ended ten years ago.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

“Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

Life, Passion

“and both of them remained floating in an empty universe where the only everyday & eternal reality was love…”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Love, Reality, Universe

“Catch that last episode of Doctor Who? Oh, right. You were trudging through the Pit of Eternal Damnation!”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

My Specter, st. 14
1800s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1804)

Forgiveness

“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

World, Imagination, Universe

“How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Context: I am no prophet — and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

“The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Truth, Idea, Science

“When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die…. (90)”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

Truth

“After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.”

Richard Russo Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

People, World, Time, Heart

“Fuckin' A… hope didn't so much spring eternal as it drowned out common sense and self-preservation.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

Hope, Spring, Sense

“She's got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Women

“ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

Star

“The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Rant in E-Minor (1997)
Variant: The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Beleive or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options.

Love, God, Forgiveness, Question

“All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Hope, Sleep, Past

“People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Interview With The Vampire (1976)
Source: Interview with the Vampire

God, People, Evil

“Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.”

Martin Amis book Time's Arrow

Source: Time's Arrow

Change

“I thought how tenuous the links were between mother and children between friends family things you think are eternal. Everything could be lost more easily than anyone could imagine.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Children, Family, Imagination, Thinking

“I have a strong will to love you for eternity.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Love, Strong

“Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”

William Blake book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Variant: Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 10

Love, Time

“It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know from experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View (1908), Ch. 19

Love, Parting

“The eternal world and the mortal world are not parallel, rather they are fused.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

World

“The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude.”

Shan Sa book Empress

Source: Empress

World, Solitude

“Who lives longer? the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beefeater are lived only in time.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

The Shortcut: 20 Stories To Get You From Here To There (2006) by Kevin A Fabiano, p. 179

Water, Time

“[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

Life, Imagination

“Do you not tire of eternity? Do you not wish to end your suffering?"
"By leaping into the Void? Not really.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Rise of the Hotel Dumort

Suffering

“For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Men

“It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.”

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

Source: Individuality From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

God, Soul

“If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.”

William James Is Life Worth Living?

"Is Life Worth Living?"
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Life, Feeling, Game, Universe

“Life has no meaning, the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Life

“Still paying, still to owe.
Eternal woe!”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

“I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night,
Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend…”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

Night

“The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution - this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Life, Soul, Time

“Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Spring, Winter, Heart, Beauty

“I can be by myself because I'm never lonely; I'm simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.”

Bohumil Hrabal book Too Loud a Solitude

Source: Too Loud a Solitude

Solitude

“The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Death, Religion, Idea

“Beauty fades, but cooking is eternal.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Beauty, Cooking

“Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Lectures on Philosophy

Beauty

“What is going on with you?" she says, shaking her head and pushing me away. "What's up with all the love and affection? I mean, you of all people, you of the eternal iPod-hoodie combo.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

Love, People

“I'm looking for someone
to quench my thirst-for all eternity"
-Luna Maxwell”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Source: Vampireville

“A breeze shook rain out of new leaves onto their hair, but in their pursuit of eternity they never noticed the chill.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer

“Can you get it? (Jaden)
If I swear myself to eternal slavery to Artemis. Yes. (Acheron)
I’d rather trade places with Prometheus and have my innards ripped out every day. (Jaden)
So would I. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“Even a minute of dying is better than an eternity of nothingness.”

Darren Shan book Sons of Destiny

Source: Sons of Destiny

“You have eternity in which to explain and only one night to be a martyr in the amphitheater Get out, darling, and let me see the lions eat you.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Night

“Monsters are eternal,” she told him, trying to keep herself from sobbing. “We will remember you and Damasen as heroes, as the best Titan and the best giant. We'll tell our children. We'll keep the story alive. Someday, you will regenerate.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Children

“Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

“Give me a little peace.
A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now, there's a thought.”

James Goldman The Lion in Winter

Source: The Lion in Winter

Peace

“She loved with so much passion as she loved with ignorance. She did not know whether it were good or evil, beneficent or dangerous, necessary or accidental, eternal or transitory, permitted or prohibited: she loved.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, Passion, Evil

“Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is.”

Robin Hobb book Royal Assassin

Source: Royal Assassin

Thinking, Time

“I'm not sure there are enough white roses in the world to make me forget Richard." I held up my hand before she could interrupt. "But I'm not sure there are enough cozy afternoons in all eternity to make me forget Jean-Claude.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Burnt Offerings

Source: Burnt Offerings

World, Forgetting

“Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on - or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Lie, Universe, Change, Anger

“She stood lost in eternity… watching the immense sky…”

Angela Carter The Magic Toyshop

Source: The Magic Toyshop

“And eternity is a long time. So if you have to spend it with someone I could see wanting to spend it with someone impossible… but interesting….”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

Time

“Everything was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and bitchy.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Weather

“The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space.”

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

Star, Sun

“The only way to have eternal love is to never let your heart forget what it’s like to live without it.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Night Play

Love, Way, Heart, Forgetting

“There shall be
Eternal summer in the grateful heart.”

Celia Thaxter (1835–1894) American writer

Heart, Summer

“You know, it’s amazing to me the wounds we carry for eternity. But what has fascinated me most these last few years is how the right person can heal them. I remember a wise man once said to me that everyone deserves to be loved. Even you. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Love, Personality

“Writing is like the life of a glacier; one eternal grind.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Life

“It is found again.
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Gone with the sun.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Elle est retrouvée,
Quoi ?
L'Éternité.
C'est la mer allée
Avec le soleil.
L'Éternité (1872)
Variant translation:
It has been recovered.
What? — Eternity.
It is the sea escaping
With the sun.
Source: آرتور رامبو: الآثار الشعرية

Sun, Sea