A Quote by Abraham Coles

Eternity! How know we but we stand On the precipitous and crumbling verge Of Time e'en now, Eternity below?

Abraham Coles

Quote Topics

Below Crumbling Eternity How Know Now Stand Time Verge

Quote Author

Abraham Coles
American - Physician
December 26, 1813 - May 3, 1891

Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.

Joseph Campbell

One can take eternity and time to be predicates of God since, being the Ancient of Days, He is the cause of all time and eternity. Yet He is before time and beyond time and is the source of the variety of time and of the seasons. Or again, He precedes the eternal ages, for He is there before eternity and above eternity, and 'His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom' (Ps. 145:13). Amen.

Pope Dionysius

What we do with Him now, we will be for all eternity. In His eternity He came to die our death and give us His eternity. His eternity requires no sun or moon or seasons or days. His is an eternal day without time. He is the Light. He is the source of all our needs. In Him is no darkness. As we have the light of the sun, we can also have the light of the Son. One provides for the natural, One for the spiritual.

Charles S. Price

Even so does he who provides for the short time of this life, but takes no care for all eternity; which is to be wise for a moment, but a fool for ever; and to act as crossly to the reason of things as can be imagined; to regard time as if it were eternity, and to neglect eternity as if it were but a short time.

John Tillotson

What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity; not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity wherein dwelleth the Divine.

Thomas Carlyle

Transiency is stamped on all our possessions, occupations, and delights. We have the hunger for eternity in our souls, the thought of eternity in our hearts, the destination for eternity written on our inmost being, and the need to ally ourselves with eternity proclaimed by the most short-lived trifles of time. Either these things will be the blessing or the curse of our lives. Which do yon mean that they shall be for you?

Alexander MacLaren

If we consider eternity, into that time never entered; eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been.

John Donne

There is no end and there is no beginning. There is only eternity. Eternity can be warm. eternity can be cold and ruthless.

Frederick Lenz

Mortality is, in reality, a very, very short period. It is literally a snap of the fingers compared to an eternity. It is so short that we can do it. We can prevail. Why, you can stand your foot in a vise for a while if you know it's going to be released soon. Yes, earthly probation is short compared to eternity, but so very much is riding on how we handle the trials and temptations of the flesh.

Hartman Rector, Jr.

Consider the shortness of time, the length of eternity, and reflect how everything here below comes to an end and passes by. Of what use is it to lean upon that which cannot give support?

Gerard Majella

Eternity is not future or past. Eternity is a dimension of now.

Joseph Campbell

Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists of putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a moment, just long enough for a joke

Hermann Hesse

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

Henry David Thoreau

Time is as necessary for remembering as it is for forgetting. Even the smallest embrace of pain needs time larger than a pause; the greatest pause requires an eternity, the greatest hurt a lifetime. A lifetime is longer than eternity: an eternity can exist without human presence.