Quotes About Eternity

If the past is older than the present, then the future must be younger. And we must all go backward with each passing year.

That's the job of consciousness, to turn Now into Always, to mistake what is for what was meant to be.

The whole cosmos was infinitely less than the whole of being . . . the whole infinity of being underlay every moment of the cosmos.

Such a small difference, between forever and once.

He can't remember when the Web wasn't here. That's the job of consciousness, to turn Now into Always, to mistake what is for what was meant to be.

When it can't go on, that's when this will end. Then they'll never see each other again, except for always.

Yet, soon enough, an afternoon, half an hour, a minute, half a sentence, or half a word all feel the same size. They disappear into the rhythm of no rhythm at all.

Nothing will be the same. The spruces answer: Nothing has ever been the same. We're all doomed, the man thinks. We have always all been doomed. But things are different this time. Yes. You're here.

When the wind stops, the stillness suspends them between two eternities, entirely in the caress of here and now.

They can't see that time is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died.

But people have no idea what time is. They think it's a line, spinning out from three seconds behind them, then vanishing just as fast into the three seconds of fog just ahead. They can't see that time is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died.

Civilization will fade away, but that will go on forever.

Branches, combing the sun, laughing at gravity, still unfolding. Something moves at the base of the motionless trunks. Nothing. Now everything. This, a voice whispers, from very nearby. This. What we have been given. What we must earn. This will never end.

Human unhappiness is evidence of our immortality.

Life is all about practicing for heaven. p 101.

If we know our original blessing, we can easily handle our original sin. If we rest in a previous dignity, we can bear insults effortlessly. If you really know your name is on some eternal list, you can let go of the irritations on the small lists of time. Ultimate security allows you to suffer small insecurity without tremendous effort. If you are tethered at some center point, it is amazing how far out you can fly and not get lost.

The problem is solved. Now go and utterly enjoy all remaining days. Not only is it "Always Advent," but every day can now be Christmas because the one we thought we were just waiting for has come once and for all.

I would wonder if you could be a hero or heroine if you did not live in deep time, that is, Past, present, and future all at once.

Love is the one eternal thing and takes away your foundational fear of death. This is very good stuff.

Only with a notion of the Preexisting Christ can we recover where this Jesus was "coming from" and where he is leading us—which is precisely into the "bosom of the Trinity" (John 1:18). "I shall return to take you with me, so that where I am you also may be" (John 14:3), the Christ has promised. That might just be the best and most succinct description of salvation there is in the whole New Testament.

Thomas Merton, say it, as he so often does: "A door opens in the center of our being, and we seem to fall through it into immense depths, which although they are infinite—are still accessible to us. All eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact.

The concern was about getting the beginning right, and then life and eternity would take care of themselves. We have been preoccupied with getting the end right, for some reason.

The pressed clay or "dust" of Adam has then become the immortal diamond that is Christ.

It's heaven all the way to heaven. And it's hell all the way to hell. Not later, but now.