Quotes About Eternity

Fun—a word you don't hear much in church—is also a foretaste of heaven and, for Christians, an important spiritual goal.

Our souls recognize God because they were created by God.

Dead as a doornail, yet dreaming of Venice.

I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life! And if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death...

My dear sister, I hope, when God Almighty in his righteous providence shall take me out of time into eternity, that it will be by a flash of lightning.

Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.

A slave can have life only by giving it away. "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (Jesus)

Infinite players die. Since the boundaries of death are always part of the play, the infinite player does not die at the end of the play, but in the course of play.

Although infinite players choose mortality, they may not know when death comes, but we can always say of them that "they die at the right time" (Nietzsche).

Finite games can be played within an infinite game, but an infinite game cannot be played within a finite game.

Infinite players regard their wins and losses in whatever finite games they play as but moments in continuing play.

Infinite players die. Since the boundaries of death are always part of the play, the infinite player does not die at the end of play, but in the course of play.

Evil is the termination of infinite play. It is infinite play coming to an end in unheard silence.

Immortality is therefore the supreme example of the contradictoriness of finite play: It is a life one cannot live.

THERE ARE at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

The passage of time is always relative to that which does not pass, to the timeless.

Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care.

As an infinite player one is neither young nor old, for one does not live in the time of another. There is therefore no external measure of an infinite player's temporality. Time does not pass for an infinite player. Each moment of time is a beginning.

Every move an infinite player makes is toward the horizon.

As we have seen, because an infinite game cannot be brought to an end, it cannot be repeated. Unrepeatability is a characteristic of culture everywhere.

If the goal of finite play is to win titles for their timelessness, and thus eternal life for oneself, the essence of infinite play is the paradoxical engagement with temporality that Meister Eckhart called "eternal birth.

So the new creation will be a place of never-ending, ever-increasing joyful relationship with God and with one another, but what will we actually do there? The answer is that we will reign over creation!

The earth is not our temporary residence while we wait to escape to heaven, but the place where God created us to live and the place we will share for eternity with all of God's creatures.

For imagine having somebody beside you day and night loving you and forgiving you and petting you forever and ever, that must be a better description of hell than being put into a boiling lake or cauldron of ice that burnt your black.