Quotes About Eternity

And doesn't everything die and return; the grass, the trees, the fields? Why not us?

In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.

Stories are all we humans have to make us immortal.

he made his story into an immortal one, so far as any story is. — But, Dr Freud, stories are all we humans have to make us immortal. 18 —

Even death is going to die!

Humanity, it seemed, was one of the galaxy's constants.

Dying never made a man better than he was when he was living.

We are tricked by a phenomenon of time: hours and days pass slowly, but years pass quickly.

A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins.

Because if the whole universe could just explode out of Nothing and then just Be, don't you see that the opposite could also be true? That it is possible to implode and Un-Be as well as to explode and Be? That it's possible to implode and Un-Be as well as to explode and Be? That all human beings, Napoleon Bonaparte, for example, or the emperor Akbar, or Angelina Jolie or your father, could simply return to Nothing once they're...done? In a sort of Little, by which I mean personal, Un-Bang?

proving once again that there was no escape from recurrence.

In my stolen photographs -- for the photographer must be a thief, he must steal instants of other people's time to make his own tiny eternities -- it was this intimacy I sought, hte closeness of the living and the dead.

Who hopes for an hour hopes for eternity. The world in an hour. What follows is unseen.

We, the living, must find what space we can alongside them; the giant dead whom we cannot tie down, though we grasp at their hair, though we rope them while they sleep

But the past is not less valuable because it is no longer the present. In fact, it's more important, because forever unseen.

Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least.

In death as in life he would be full of unspoken words and they would be his Hell, tormenting him through all eternity.

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.

Once a person believes - really believes - that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one.

It is time we realize that belief is not a private matter. As a man believes, so he will act. Believe that you are a member of a chosen people, awash in the salacious exports of an evil culture that is turning your children away from God, believe that you will be rewarded with an eternity of unimaginable delights by dealing death to these infidels—and flying a plane into a building is only a matter of being asked to do it.

There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell….

Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin—which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next.

Dear God, I understand that if I fail to believe in you, I'll burn in hell for eternity. Thanks for being such a good sport about it.

Prayer reveals to souls the vanity of earthly goods and pleasures. It fills them with light, strength and consolation; and gives them a foretaste of the calm bliss of our heavenly home.