"Eternity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come to implore your Majesty at length to grant me the retirement for which I have long sighed. My health is failing; I feel that my life will soon be ended. Eternity approaches me, and before rendering an account to the eternal King, I would render one to my temporal sovereign. It is eighteen years, Sire, since you placed in my hands a weak and divided kingdom; I return it to you united and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... left the room, and Amelia gazed after him breathlessly, and with a loudly-beating heart. It seemed to her an eternity ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... grey hair or two in its dark depths, and the curves, that had suggested a Chesterfield sofa to her young friend, were now something more opulent than they had been, Mrs. Mangan's progress along the corridor of eternity had made no perceptible mark on her. Still, in assisting her descent from a high wagonette, an arm of steel ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... as night,—in the perfumed meshes of which a jewelled serpent gleams ... I have never felt the insidious horror of a love like strong drink mounting through the blood to the brain, and there making inextricable confusion of time, space, eternity, everything, except the passion itself; never, never have I felt all this, Denzil, till to-night! To-night! Bah! It is a wild night of dancing and folly, and the Princess Ziska is to blame for it all! Don't look so tragic, my ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... lantern glowing like a star, hung between earth and heaven. In this twilight hour of blue and gold the tower is the mighty guardian spirit of the scene, sending down sonorous word of the hours as they pass, and lifting our eyes, like its steady lantern, toward the watch-towers of Eternity. Must we be forever reminded that those glowing window squares up its flanks denote lawyers toiling late at their briefs, or mining stock promoters planning a new cast of the net? Must we be forever told that this is not a ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... On this account, he attempted to go forward to look out, but immediately saw that the ship had separated in the middle, and that the fore-part having changed its position, lay further towards the sea. In such an emergency, when the next moment might plunge him into eternity, he determined to seize the present opportunity, and follow the example of the crew and the soldiers, who were now quitting the ship in numbers, and making their way to the shore, though quite ignorant of its ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... Thine hour hath come! Eternity Draws nigh—and, beckoning from above, One hundred years, aflame with Love, Again shall bid old earth good-by— And, lo, the light! far heaven is nigh! New themes seraphic, Life divine, And bliss that ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... Frahnce, and Ireland and of Virginia. Defender of the Faith, &c. Her most humble servant Edmund Spenser doth in all humilitie, Dedicate, present, and consecrate These his labours, To live with the eternity of her Fame." The next year Spenser received a pension from the crown of fifty pounds ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... as they have, whose triumph is her glory and her crown? The Catholic Church, which has so successfully promoted the civilization of society and the moral regeneration of nations, achieved her triumph by the conversion of those she first drew from darkness. Placed as lights on the rocks of eternity, and shining on us who are yet tossed about on the stormy seas of time, the penitent saints serve us as saving beacons to guide our course during the tempest. Many a feeble soul would have suffered shipwreck had it not taken refuge near those tutelary towers where are suspended ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... also urges objections drawn from the origin of some of man's mental faculties, such as "the capacity to form ideal conceptions of space and time, of eternity and infinity—the capacity for intense artistic feelings of pleasure, in form, colour and composition—and for those abstract notions of form and number which render geometry and arithmetic possible," also from the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... explained. It was not active in his mind, this reservation. It was passive, underlying, subconscious, as beneath vigour's incredulity of death lies passively admission of death's final certitude. He believed what she believed; but he believed it as are believed infinity and eternity: wherein mankind, believing, reposes upon that limitation of the human mind which cannot conceive infinity but sees ultimately an end, and can pretend eternity through myriad years but feels ultimately a termination. Harry believed what she believed but only by stabilisation ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... our being we are farther advanced, and may there be experiencing the peace and assurance of a considerable second nature. But there too perpetual verification is necessary. And so many tracts remain unsubdued or capable of higher cultivation that throughout our lives, perhaps on into eternity, effort will still find room for work, and suitable ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... a Garrison of eight hundred Men, most of Mahoni's Dragoons. It lies at the very Bottom of a high Hill; on the upper Part whereof they shew the Ruins of the once famous SAGUNTUM; famous sure to Eternity, if Letters shall last so long, for an inviolable Fidelity to a negligent Confederate, against an implacable Enemy. Here yet appear the visible Vestigia of awful Antiquity, in half standing Arches, and the yet unlevell'd Walls and ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... ours is crowded to overflowing. They are never alone, for the world is their companion, they are never hurried, for they move with time itself, whereas our existence is but one long effort to outrun the revolution of the hours. They do not dream of fame, for they feel the eternity of perpetually renewed life in all that surrounds them; they have never heard of competition, for their only ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... eternity, till Ellison brought them back to earth. He was returning from the hotel with Wadley, and as he passed they ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... set his helm? And as he gazes, he recognises with joy in his heart that the stars themselves, with all their recurrent comets and flaming meteors and immovable constellations, hardly cast a stain upon the white radiance of eternity, under which he has been striving and crying and perpetrating ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... utterly unheroic. The desire to escape pains and penalties hereafter by pains and penalties here; the balance of present loss against future gain—what is this but selfishness extended out of this world into eternity? "Not worldliness," indeed, as a satirist once said with bitter truth, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... my hand in token of gratitude; her eyes were shining with happiness. As Max looked at the pale, sweet face opposite to him his heart must have swelled with pride and joy: nothing could come between those two now; henceforth they would belong to each other for time and eternity. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... hour of this new day, with all its richness and glory, with all its sublime and eternity-determining possibilities, and each succeeding hour as it comes, but not before it comes. This is the secret of character building. This simple method will bring any one to the realization of the highest life that can be even conceived of, and there is nothing in this connection that ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost In the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness.—He is the father of curses, replied Dr. Slop.—So am not I, replied my uncle.—But he is cursed, and damn'd already, to all eternity, replied Dr. Slop. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... spiritual destitution: and no mental condition is more frequently referred to, as acceptable with the Deity, than that which consists of contrition and lowliness of mind.—"Thus sayeth the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit,—to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." With this state of mind is very naturally associated a sense of moral ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... instance to the contrary in prose. Mr. H. G. Wells, who, as far as I know, has never written a line of verse, was inspired a few years ago to write a short story, Under the Knife. Out of a clock-dial, a brass rod, and a whiff of chloroform, he has conjured for us a sensation of space and eternity, evoked the face of the Unknowable, and an awesome, august voice, like the voice of the Judgment Day; a great voice, perhaps the voice of science itself, uttering the words: "There shall be no more pain!" I advise ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... necessary for the wise son of Zeus to seek information, as in the Hymn to Hermes, from an old clown. This medley of ideas, in the mind of a civilised poet, who believes that Apollo is all-knowing in the counsels of eternity, is as truly mythological as Dunbar's God who laughs his heart sore at an ale-house jest. Dunbar, and the author of the Hymn, and the savage with his tale of Tundun or Daramulun, have all quite contradictory sets of ideas alternately present to their minds; the mediaeval poet, of course, being ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... nothing to reproach yourself with. Crystalman has had eternity to practice his cunning in, so it's no wonder if a man can't see straight, even with the best intentions. What ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the drudgery out of an occupation. Putting off, usually means leaving off; and "going to do" becomes "going undone." Doing a deed is like sowing a seed; if not done at just the right time it will be forever out of season. The summer of eternity will not be long enough to bring to maturity the fruit ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... convictions, or by the contagious enthusiasm of example and devotion,—faith in Christ and in his teachings must, among the sincere, have been always connected with a sense of wonder and of joy at the change wrought in their views of life and of eternity. Their thoughts dwelt naturally upon the resurrection of their Lord, as the greatest of the miracles which were the seal of his divine commission, and as the type of the rising of the followers of Him who brought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... this is done in Romeo and Juliet by the dissensions between the houses of Montague and Capulet. No eloquence is capable of painting the overwhelming force of the catastrophe in Othello,—the pressure of feelings which measure out in a moment the abysses of eternity. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... buffeted by the ceaseless fury that no longer gave quarter, they slowly fought their way hand-over-hand along the rope, Dan now crawling last. After a frozen eternity they reached the end of the line fastened man-high against a second haven of wall. Hillas pushed open the unlocked door, the three men staggered in and fell panting against the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the angels upon the slopes of Eden; hewers of wood and drawers of water, who think that the wood they hew and the water they draw, are better than the pine-forests that cover the mountains like the shadow of God, and than the great rivers that move like his eternity. And so comes upon us that woe of the preacher, that though God "hath made everything beautiful in his time, also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... mention but for the danger of misunderstanding its message. Rightly read Omar Khayyam's lesson is serenity and poise and that power and happiness which come from these. The disciple of the tent-maker is not apt to lose his bearings. He no longer regards to-day as eternity, no longer looks at the world and the universe from himself as a center. Reject the Persian poet's apotheosis of wine, absorb his philosophy of calmness, and you will do your duty regardless of consequences. And that is the chief ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... original and attractive title, Ethics of Atheism. The great offense of the scientific (sciolistic) atheist is his lofty arrogance. He complacently assumes the name of Infallible Wisdom. He "understands all mysteries;" his mental telescope sweeps eternity "from everlasting to everlasting;" his microscopic vision pierces the secrets of creation,—sees the beauty and order of all celestial worlds emerge from fiery chaotic dust,—by the fortunate contact of cooling cinders of the right ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity.—Daniel Webster. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... great concern for their interests, which, being genuine and sincere, naturally discovered itself in a variety of instances. I remember I had once occasion to visit one of his dragoons in his last illness at Harborough, and I found the man upon the borders of eternity—a circumstance which, as he apprehended himself, must add some peculiar weight and credibility to his discourse. He then told me, in his colonel's absence, that he questioned not that he should have everlasting reason to bless God on Colonel ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... on my best garments, but as I got into the car something of the old protest at having to do what I did not want to do, to go where I did not want to go, came over me, and I was conscious of childish irritability. I did not care to know the Swinks. Eternity wouldn't be long enough, and certainly time wasn't to waste on people like that, and yet because Selwyn had asked me to call I was doing it. All men are alike. When they don't know how to do a thing that's got to be done, they tell a woman to do it. It was not my business ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... said feebly, calculating that the sum total of even minimum penalties for the five crimes would outrun his natural life and consume an eternity of reincarnations. ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... slow length across the couch of sleeplessness. To Sheila, lying in the four-poster—a downy couch, indeed, for a quiet conscience—the space of time after she blew out her lamp and until the dawn passed like the sluggish coils of some Midgard serpent. An eternity in itself. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... prosy counsel, Lord Cockburn was commiserated by a friend as they left the Court together with the remark: "Counsel has encroached very much on your time, my lord."—"Time, time," exclaimed his lordship; "he has exhausted time and encroached on eternity." ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... sunset to dawn, the curving fire of the roaring mortars, and the steady, never-ceasing crack of the sharp-shooters along the front. Snow, or blinding sleet, or freezing rains, might be falling, but the fire went on—it seemed destined to go on to all eternity. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... or possessed of moral perfections. From either the blind or the intelligent operation of this infinite Time, which bears but too near an affinity with the chaos of the Greeks, the two secondary but active principles of the universe, were from all eternity produced, Ormusd and Ahriman, each of them possessed of the powers of creation, but each disposed, by his invariable nature, to exercise them with different designs. [1002] The principle of good is eternally aborbed in light; the principle ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... and failures, we claim our great heritage, "life and truth and force, like an electric current," will permeate our lives until we enter into our "birthright in eternity." ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... evening makes us poorer by a day. It would probably make us angry to see this short space of time slipping away, if we were not secretly conscious in the furthest depths of our being that the spring of eternity belongs to us, and that in it we are always ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... cannot determine whether I am giving you a mean deal or whether this is all for your good. Your mother, Barbara Parker Mullen, is dead, God bless her! She has been dead now six months. It seems to me like eternity. I have tried to take care of you as she would have cared for you but I am afraid I have lost heart, and my courage, and I am afraid my faith has slipped from me. I fear that I am a broken-spirited failure. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... forget a vote of thanks proposed in my hearing by the excellent doctor of Salen, a pleasant little place situated on a V-shaped creek of Loch Sunart. I never expect to meet a more genial or more humorous man than the doctor, on this side of eternity. He knows the roads of gusty Ardnamurchan better than any other living man, and, night and day, by sun and by moon, in weather of clear blue, and under the eddying blinding flakes, he is ever on the move. He found time to come to the meeting and propose a vote of thanks to the donor of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... have served as a gallery for the priests to walk about in, just like the hypostyle halls of the Egyptian temples. In the midst of these columns, and surrounded by them, is a temple called that of eternity. On the right or south side, we see the chief temple, with halls of several hundred pillars at the east and west end, also supporting a flat roof of stone. The pagoda itself rests on a basis 360 feet long and 260 broad, and rises to a surprising ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... discarded verses are of a rather gruesome sort, but more are inspired by contemplation of sublime themes, like this apostrophe to "Eternity," which was published in the "New ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... rigid, her hand upon her heart. During the period of the committee's absence inside the jail she did not alter her position by a hair's breadth. She was in the hypnosis of a portentous waiting. Time fell into the abyss of eternity: whether it were ten minutes or ten hours did ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... of such temporary conventions as render the incident of human existence possible, the brooding Demon which men call Truth stares steadily at Tengri under the high stars which are passing too, and which at last shall pass away and leave the Demon watching all alone amid the ruins of eternity." ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... people of his day for glory and valour and just dealing among the subjects. And it chanced that one day the old King fell sick and his fluttering heart forebode him of translation to the Mansion of Eternity. His sickness grew upon him till he was nigh upon death, when he called his son and commended his mother and subjects to his care and caused all the Emirs and Grandees once more swear allegiance to the Prince and assured himself of them by strongest oaths; after which he lingered ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... they wait for the renewing of the age, and perchance for its end. They say that it is very doubtful whether the world was made from nothing, or from the ruins of other worlds, or from chaos, but they certainly think that it was made, and did not exist from eternity. Therefore they disbelieve in Aristotle, whom they consider a logician and not a philosopher. From analogies, they can draw many arguments against the eternity of the world. The sun and the stars they, so to speak, regard as the living representatives and signs of God, as ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... years after she had been weaned, "come Lammas." Save that the "Age of Love" may be said to be "Youth"—for Love aye rejuvenates—there is nothing to be said. Wherefore the German gentleman who protested against the cliches of novel-writers in the matter of the eternity of passion was well within the wilderness of the subject. The cliche metaphor, by the way, is itself becoming a cliche, so stereotyped do we grow in protesting against the stereotyped. Germans are, perhaps, not the best ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... doctor's experiences that day amid the sturdy, natural-minded population of a muling village not far from Bursley. Seldom have I had such a bath in the pure fluid of human nature. All sense of time was lost. I lived in an eternity. I could not suggest to my host that we should depart. I could, however, decline more whisky. And I could, given the chance, discourse with gay despair concerning the miserable wreck that I should be on the morrow in consequence of this high living. I asked them how I could be expected, in such ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... two, and my seeming to like it will not prolong it. My heart swells with happiness at the thought of escaping from you, good bore; you shall share my happiness, good bore. It is so kind of you not to bore me to all eternity." ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... persuasive eloquence He calmed every fear, and dissipated every scruple: He bad her reflect on the infinite mercy of her Judge, despoiled Death of his darts and terrors, and taught her to view without shrinking the abyss of eternity, on whose brink She then stood. Elvira was absorbed in attention and delight: While She listened to his exhortations, confidence and comfort stole insensibly into her mind. She unbosomed to him without ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... delivered from the evil in him, he must himself begin to cast it out, himself begin to disobey it, and work righteousness. As much as either is it common sense that a man should look for and expect the help of his Father in the endeavour. Alone, he might labour to all eternity and not succeed. He who has not made himself, cannot set himself right without him who made him. But his maker is in him, and is his strength. The man, however, who, instead of doing what he is told, broods speculating on ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... indeed all seemed lost. But bitter as were their tears, a noble faith lifted these Puritans out of despair. As they bore him to his grave they sang, in the words of the ninetieth psalm, how fleeting in the sight of the Divine Eternity is the life of man. But as they turned away the yet nobler words of the forty-third psalm broke from their lips, as they prayed that the God who had smitten them would send out anew His light and His truth, that they might lead them and bring them ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... deportment, and his utter heedlessness of small things. The writer has heard men preach the doctrine of the trifling value of the things of a present time, and of the tremendous importance of those of a never-ending eternity, but Daniel Gibbons is the only person she ever knew, who lived that doctrine. He believed in plainness of apparel as taught by Friends, not as a form or a rule of society, but as a principle; often quoting from some one who said that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... suddenly sacred and mysterious. The silly little prattle hushes into confidential whispers. Every crush through the season, becomes the scene of a reunion of two hearts which have been parted for the eternity of twenty-four hours. Love, in fact, does not in the least change woman's life, or give it new earnestness or a fresh direction; but it makes it infinitely more interesting, and it heightens the enjoyment of wasting a day by a new sense of power. For that ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Orchard, Maine. The business at hand was a collection for missionary purposes. The preacher resorted to the following suggestions: "The most remarkable remembrance which I have of foreign lands is that of multitudes, the waves of lost humanity who ceaselessly are shattered on the shores of eternity. How despairing are they, how poor in love—their religion knows no joy, no pleasure, nor song. Once I heard a Chinaman say why he was a Christian. It seemed to him that he lay in a deep abyss, out of which he could not escape. Have you ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... his position. Engelhardt felt precisely so and since his efforts were unremitting, his delusion exhausted him to such an extent, that in one year he had aged as if in ten. Even if—so he said—the heavenly bodies had been so marvelously ordained by the almighty Creator, that through all eternity they revolved in their foreordained circles and spirals (as he said), yet he suffered beyond endurance from the slightest disturbance in outer space. During the winter he had been unable to sleep for two weeks, because a swiftly moving star was pulling at him. Curiously ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... sounded, in my ears, Spanishly. The Espirito Santo they called it, a great ship of many decks of guns, laden with treasure and grandees of Spain, and fierce soldadoes, that now lay fathom deep to all eternity, done with her wars and voyages, in Sandag bay, upon the west of Aros. No more salvos of ordnance for that tall ship, the 'Holy Spirit,' no more fair winds or happy ventures; only to rot there deep in the sea-tangle and ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... What a malignant destiny did you conjure up to destroy with the breath of poison, in the first moments of its growth, that race which you intended to plant with firm roots to last on till eternity! ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Why, my lover's life, in me Once concentrated, now diffused, illumes The endless reaches of eternity With infinite brilliance, ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... by Galilee! O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee The silence of eternity Interpreted by love! ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... bank; presently, when the boom should have drifted its maximum distance he would be hung up stationary in deep water while the released logs bore down upon him with the current and gently shoulder him into eternity. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... on art that she pores over. Mallet can't help me—not with all his money, nor all his good example, nor all his friendship, which I 'm so profoundly well aware of: not with it all multiplied a thousand times and repeated to all eternity! I thought you would help me, you and Mary; that 's why I sent for you. But you can't, don't think it! The sooner you give up the idea the better for you. Give up being proud of me, too; there 's nothing left of me to be proud of! A year ago I was a mighty fine fellow; but do you ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... hard work, Bob, and it seems strange that a man who had long professed himself weary of his life, should take so much trouble to preserve it. I think I must have been working upward of half an hour before I got to the top; I know the time seemed an eternity of pain and peril. It was impossible for me to leave the place until after dark without being observed, so I hid myself behind a clump of laurel-bushes, and lay down on the grass faint and exhausted to wait for nightfall. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... pulsations of created beings, a few successions of acts, a few lamps held out in the firmament, enable us to talk of Time, make epochs, write histories,—to do more,—to date the revelations of God to man. But these lamps are held to measure out some of the moments of eternity, to divide the history of God's operations in the birth and death of nations, of worlds. It is a goodly name for our notions of breathing, suffering, enjoying, acting. We personify it. We call it by every name of fleeting, dreaming, vaporing imagery. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... or woman. So strongly has this thought become the life thought of the human race, that the members of each sex look upon themselves as being just what their material forms stand for. That is, a woman believes that she will be a purified woman through all eternity, that the woman is permanent, real, immortal, and that she will continue on, as a woman, with her womanly traits of character greatly expanded. While man thinks that as a man he is real, permanent, and ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... the goddess of writing. She is named in the pyramid times, and appears in scenes of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. Four pairs of elemental gods were worshipped at Hermopolis, each pair male and female; Heh, Eternity; Kek, Darkness; Nu, the heavenly ocean; Nenu, the Inundation. They are shown as human figures with the heads of frogs and serpents. There were also personifications of Seeing, Hearing, Taste, Perception, Strength, ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... subdued murmurs. Heaven was above him, and the world beneath. The memory of his wrongs and his ambitions alike vanished in the shadow cast before by his approaching death. Alfonso and Ferrara faded away upon the horizon of eternity; even the fame of his Gerusalemme, the great object for which he had lived, had become utterly indifferent to him. In the monastery of St. Onofrio, a bent, sorrow-stricken man, old before his time, joining with the monks in the duties ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... our certain knowledge his victims are many. If the murder of his adoptive father, Sir Michael, was actually the first of his crimes, we know of three other poor souls who beyond any shadow of doubt were launched into eternity by the Black Arts of ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... forbidden to put them to death. They had a dog-god and a cat-goddess, and they honoured the beetle because they saw it rolling a ball of earth in which to lay its eggs, and fancied it an emblem of eternity; and thus all these creatures were consecrated, and when they died were rolled up in fine linen and spices, just as the ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "who has felt true patriotism, and understood true glory." Another toast was "To the memory of Washington, fresh as the passing moment, lasting as eternity." ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... acknowledgment, and bow'd the head Profoundly reverential. A deep calm Came over me, and to the inward eye Vivid perception. Set against each other, I saw weigh'd out the things of time and sense, And of eternity;—and oh! how light Look'd in that truthful hour the earthly scale! And oh! what strength, when from the penal doom Nature recoil'd, in His remember'd words: "I am ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... pleasure to see for a long time—a second edition of his more famous colleague, the futile Kerensky. Little did I dream that within a few days I would beg for this man's life and that the Middlesex Regiment would shield him from eternity. ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... people called impertinent, and manliness had nothing to do with him. But 'inhuman' and blasphemous!' Why had he come all the way over from Plum-cum-Pippins, at considerable personal expense, except in furtherance of that highest humanity which concerns itself with eternity? And as for blasphemy, it might, he thought, as well be said that he was blasphemous whenever he read the Bible aloud to his flock! His first idea was to write an exhaustive letter on the subject to Mr. Caldigate, in which he would invite that gentleman to recall ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... of subsistence, and is well content that in that scramble the weak, the ignorant, and the unfortunate should go to the wall,—not the exponent of the conventional theology, which has taught men to dream of a Heaven in which the happiness of the "elect" will be unruffled by the knowledge that an eternity of misery is the doom of perhaps a ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... with that strange, unblinking gaze, and she thought and spoke with the slow deliberateness that characterized everything about her, as if well aware of an eternity that was hers and in which there was no need for haste. Again I was impressed by the enormous certitude of her. In this eternity that seemed so indubitably hers, there was time and to spare for safe-footing and stable equilibrium—for certitude, in short. No more in her spiritual ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies, O skilled to sing of time or eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages. German is, however, the only modern literature in which alcaics have been written with much success. They were introduced by Klopstock, and used by Holderlin, by Voss in his translations of Horace, by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... remained for one hour, our lives depending upon the animals not closing the line: but Providence watched over us, and after what appeared an eternity of intense suspense, the columns became thinner and thinner, till we found ourselves only encircled with the weaker and more exhausted animals which brought up the rear. Our first danger was over, but we had still to escape from ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... Schlesien heard remarks, upon which his weighty Teutonic mind sat crushingly. Do these English care one bit for music?—for anything finer than material stuffs?—what that man Durance calls, 'their beef, their beer, and their pew in eternity'? His wrath at their babble and petty brabble doubted that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sore vexation of spirit to me when I saw, as the wise man saw of old, that whatever I could hope to perform must necessarily be of very temporary duration; and if so, why do it? I said to myself, whatever name I can acquire, will it endure for eternity? scarcely so. A thousand years? Let me see! what have I done already? I have learnt Welsh, and have translated the songs of Ab Gwilym, some ten thousand lines, into English rhyme; I have also learnt Danish, and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... three days intervened ere the expiration of the given month; and each day did the Sub-Prior of St. Francis pass with the prisoner, exhorting, comforting, and strengthening him for the dread passage through which it was now too evident his soul must pass to eternity. It was with difficulty and pain, that Stanley could even then so cease to think of Marie, as to prepare himself with fitting sobriety and humility for the fate impending; but the warm sympathy of Father Francis, whose fine feelings had never been ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... stands in apparent changelessness in a silent rose-and-white eternity, so she seemed to herself a stationary being. But the convolvulus has budded and bloomed and closed again while you thought her still, and she dies—the rayed and rosy cup so full of airy sweetness—she dies in ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... temple for time and eternity, showing the divinely appointed elements of a good character (2 Peter 1:5-8), their sure foundations; the person and work of our Lord Jesus and the inspired Word of God; and their crowning bond, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... but it produced no effect whatever on my mind. I have since wandered among men of many races and many religions. I have studied man, and nature in all its aspects, and I have sought after truth. In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death. I think I have fairly heard and fairly weighed the evidence on both sides, and I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths. I will pass over ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... secured from my beloved. The rebellion broke out at the time when Cambyses was returning in rage over the disasters of his unfortunate campaign. I was accused of being a rebel, was made a prisoner, and having effected my escape was killed in the chase on Lake Moeris. From out of eternity I saw the imposture triumph. I saw the priest of Abydos night and day persecuting the maiden, who had taken refuge in a temple of Isis on the island of Philae. I saw him persecute and harass her, even in the subterranean ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... big noses and Irishmen who were always falling down; but the Gaiety was different. Twice Nance had passed that fiery portal, and she knew that once inside, you drifted into states of beatitude, which eternity itself was too short to enjoy. The world ceased to exist for you, until a curtain, as relentless as fate, descended, and you reached blindly for your hat and stumbled down from the gallery to the ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... calmness of one dealing with an everyday incident; yet the incident was—it should have been—tremendous. We stood waiting silently for an eternity, as one waits for a hare to break covert before the beaters. From down the long hill came a small sound of horses' hoofs—a sound like the beating of the heart, intermittent—a muffled thud on turf, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... like some interested spectator, watched the struggle; or, again, I was struggling in the air with some powerful but viewless monster form, that clutched my throat with iron fingers, but whose body was impalpable to the grasp of my hands. A mighty space, an eternity of time and daylight came. Then, like one in a dream, I rose mechanically, and, finding the pin I had secreted, I stood on the little wooden bench, and, impelled by some spiritual but irresistible force, I scratched on the wall the message I had ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... singular origin and perverted practice, they think they are to be rewarded in some future life: stranger still, if they are persuaded of the contrary, and think this blow, which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity. I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man at large presents: of organised injustice, cowardly violence and treacherous crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. They cannot be too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Eternity of Matter. Disproved by its Composite Nature. Disproved by its Motion. Evolution only a big Perpetual Motion Humbug. Work of a Designer in the structure of the Eye. The Eye-Maker sees over a wide Field and far. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... conversation of the friar, whose mild benevolence of manners bore some resemblance to those of St. Aubert, soothed the violence of her grief, and lifted her heart to the Being, who, extending through all place and all eternity, looks on the events of this little world as on the shadows of a moment, and beholds equally, and in the same instant, the soul that has passed the gates of death, and that, which still lingers in the body. 'In the sight of God,' said Emily, 'my dear father now exists, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... exacted no obligations from him, but rather silently insisted on the freedom. Such freedom, mated to hers, was the last great boon he asked of life that had already given him so much. Still he hesitated for very fear of losing the joy of the hour that would be his and hers for eternity when he sealed it with the passionate words in ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... precipices, the enterprising Sivas Vali has built an araba road. One can scarce resist the temptation of wheeling down some of the less precipitous slopes, but it is sheer indiscretion, for the roadway makes sharp turns at points where to continue straight ahead a few feet too far would launch one into eternity; a broken brake, a wild "coast" of a thousand feet through mid-air into the dark depths of a rocky gorge, and the "tour around the world" would abruptly terminate. For a dozen miles I traverse a tortuous road winding its way among wild mountain gorges and dark pine forests; Circassian horsemen ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... world is Thy command; Vast as eternity Thy love; Firm as a rock Thy truth must stand, When rolling years shall ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... you hear about it to all eternity, too, wouldn't he?" reflected the lad. "Come on, then; but you go first." And he followed me up the log, both of us feeling like shame-faced schoolboys. We stole into the tent, the one tent of all others that had interest for us that night, and deposited our burden of flowers ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Yet his foresight and ambition were great, and he had not long been on the throne before he decided on an endeavor to recover the African provinces. The Vandals were Arian heretics, denying the Godhead and Eternity of our Blessed Lord, and they had cruelly persecuted and constantly oppressed the Catholics, who entreated the Eastern Empire to deliver them, so that religious zeal added strength to Justinian's ambition. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... drawback to them is, that in the absence of any decisive authority they never come to any satisfactory conclusion. We have now been discussing for sixteen days the uses of a whale's blow-holes; and I firmly believe that if our voyage were prolonged, like the Flying Dutchman's, to all eternity, we should never reach any solution of the problem that would satisfy all the disputants. The captain has an old Dutch History of the World, in twenty-six folio volumes, to which he appeals as final authority in all questions under the heavens, whether pertaining to love, science, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... know The speechless depths of her awful woe; For the bright young life into Eternity hurled Was her only like to a ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... cried the abbot, when the page had chanted the Kyrie eleison of his sweet sins, "thou art the accomplice of a great felony, and thou has betrayed thy lord. Dost thou know page of darkness, that for this thou wilt burn through all eternity? and dost thou know what it is to lose forever the heaven above for a perishable and changeful moment here below? Unhappy wretch! I see thee precipitated for ever in the gulfs of hell unless thou payest to God in this world that which thou owest ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... a long, continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly. The sunlight fell so implacably from a fixed sky that one was naturally inclined to slip away out of the reach of its attentions, and ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... How bearable the rains of stormy weather; But when they unclasp hands, e'en then the dew Grows into ice-points, piercing through and through. "Till death us part," and am I really free? Is the chain severed for eternity? Look back my conscience, for the hours go fast, Through the dim corridors of the far past. Oh memory, from what point will thou start, Back to the time when Victor won my heart; He was my idol, bright star of my life, Our home was planned, ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... No longer shall language be dumb! Thy vision shall grasp— As one doth the glittering hasp Of a sword made splendid with gems and with gold— The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of it merely. And out of the stark Eternity, awful and dark, Immensity silent and cold,— Universe-shaking as trumpets, or cymbaling metals, Imperious; yet pensive and pearly And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals, Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too early,— The majestic ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... again?" whispered she, bending her face down close to his. "Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another with all this wo! Thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! Then tell ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... matter is in the hands of another—the Master of the ship. The ship is foundering. What then have I to do? I do the only thing that remains to me—to be drowned without fear, without a cry, without upbraiding God, but knowing that what has been born must likewise perish. For I am not Eternity, but a human being—a part of the whole, as an hour is part of the day. I must come like the hour, and like ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... wanders lone and wearily Through desert tracts of Silence and of Night, Pining for Lovers keen utterance and for light, And chasing shadowy forms that mock and flee, My soul was wandering through Eternity, Seeking, within the depth and on the height Of Being, one with whom it might unite In ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... the thought of God and the dread hereafter never entered, had encased his spiritual being in a sort of brazen armor, through which no ordinary blow of conscience could penetrate. Still he had fearful glimpses of recent events, and his soul, hanging as it was over the abyss of eternity, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... been taken by the British, passed through many vicissitudes, and was in no condition for a long cruise in the Pacific. So mouldering was her fabric, that the reckless sailors, when seated in the forecastle, dug their knives into the dank boards between them and eternity as easily as into the moist sides of some old pollard oak. She was much dilapidated and rapidly becoming more so; for Black Baltimore, the ship's cook, when in want of firewood, did not scruple to hack splinters from the bits and beams. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... mind, and body,' said Esclairmonde—'at least so I, an ignorant woman, have been told. Should not the true Light for eternity lighten the spirit rather ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opposites to prove, Of the soft wax and diamond hard am I; But still, obedient to the laws of love, Here, hard or soft, I offer you my breast, Whate'er you grave or stamp thereon shall rest Indelible for all eternity. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... thinking the greatest part of moral philosophy, antient and modern, seems to be founded; nor is there an ampler field, as well for metaphysical arguments, as popular declamations, than this supposed pre-eminence of reason above passion. The eternity, invariableness, and divine origin of the former have been displayed to the best advantage: The blindness, unconstancy, and deceitfulness of the latter have been as strongly insisted on. In order to shew the fallacy of all this philosophy, I shall endeavour ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... through the latter region, and we enjoy every one of those "Roadside Sketches," so delicate, so unerring, and so suggestive. Thackeray is a delightful traveller; for he, who can talk more wisely of old clothes than most preachers of eternity, gets out of the nothings that tourists see the very life and spirit of a country. Here is something also about modern art and pictures in England and France, which comes as near not at all boring as anything of that nature can; but we find ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... won't you see, that, if you leave the one great sin all uncovered, open to the continual attrition of a life of goodness, God will let it wear away? It will lessen and lessen, until at the last, when the Ocean of Eternity beats against it, it shall go down, down into the deeps of love that no mortal line can fathom. Oh, Herbert, come out with me!—come out into this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... he groaned; "an eternity to wait. I will give you three months to think about it; then I will come to ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... seek her, and seek her resolutely. And here let us have the courage to make a cruel observation, in days when religion is nothing more than a useful means to some, and a poesy to others. Devotion causes a moral ophthalmia. By some providential grace, it takes from souls on the road to eternity the sight of many little earthly things. In a word, pious persons, devotes, are stupid on various points. This stupidity proves with what force they turn their minds to celestial matters; although the Voltairean Chevalier de Valois declared that it was difficult to decide whether ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... past and there is no danger. There is nothing for fire to burn. And there is one spot all earth that God has swept over. Eighteen hundred years ago the storm burst on Calvary; the Son of God took it into his own bosom, and now, if we take our stand by the Cross, we are safe for time and eternity. ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... For what seemed an eternity he lay thinking, unable to come to any rational conclusion. The distressing effect of the light rays increased, rather than diminished, as his nerves became more and more unstrung. It seemed, even with, his eyes closed, that he could feel the weight of the cone of light ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... the rest, a few, Escape their prison and depart On the wide ocean of life anew. There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart Listeth will sail; Nor doth he know how there prevail, Despotic on that sea. Trade-winds which cross it from eternity: Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves. And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning bursts is seen Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguished face and flying hair ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and acts in him? and how can he have any sense of loyalty to a deity whom he cannot distinguish from himself? Nor do men generally demand so absolute a unity as is represented by pantheism. Such questions as those relating to the eternity of matter, the possibility of the existence of an immaterial being, and the mode in which such a being, if it exists, could act on matter, have not seemed practical to the majority of men. Man demands a method of worship, and pantheism does not permit organized worship. For these reasons it has ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... day had come at last over a wait that seemed an eternity to the impatient girls. The long school-day was endless and, in spite of all good resolutions, they could not keep their thoughts from wandering to the alluring picture they had conjured up. A picture ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... friends, the dame remained perdu; silent and invisible as a spirit. But in her own good time, she would mysteriously emerge; or be suddenly espied lounging quietly in the forecastle, as if she had been there from all eternity. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the little swarthy group of children gathered around me. To one of these girls I said, 'How is it that you bear such a wandering and exposed life?' In reply, she said, 'Sir, it is use; use is second nature.' 'But have you any religion? Do you think about God, about judgment, and eternity? Do you know how to pray?' She answered, 'I say my prayers, sir, night and morning.' I then said, 'can any of your people read?' 'Yes, sir,' she replied, 'one of our men that is not here, can read very well.' 'Have you a Bible among you?' ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... space of time, hardly an instant though it seemed an eternity, the ship appeared somewhat sluggish to respond to the movement of the rudder, hanging in stays and settling down into the great valley of water that loomed on our lee; but the next moment a glad cry of relief burst from all as she answered her helm, a wavering motion ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 5:13), there will ever after remain an object-lesson sufficient to safe-guard the universe against a repetition of the evil. Only some 6000 years are allotted to this work of evil; and 6000 years are as nothing compared with eternity. ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... Magdalene or a thief on the cross, his case may be exhibited to encourage hope in every returning prodigal. During this period of his childhood, while striving to harden his heart against God, many were the glimmerings of light which from time to time directed his unwilling eyes to a dread eternity. In the still hours of the night 'in a dream God opened' his ears[25]—the dreadful vision was that 'devils and wicked spirits laboured to draw me away with them.' These thoughts must have left a deep and alarming ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... them from afar, the hills of eternity, their ever- enduring summits clothed with garlands of bloom. O that I might rise on wings like the eagle, fly upward with my eyes, and raise my countenance and gaze into the ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... allowed herself only a few hours of such weakness. What! should she hesitate between heaven and hell, between God and devil, between this world and the next, between sacrifice of time and sacrifice of eternity, when the disposal of her own niece, her own child, her nearest and dearest, was concerned? Was it not fit that the world should be crushed in the bosom of a young girl? and how could it be crushed so effectually as by marrying her to an old man, one whom she respected, ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... swiftly that no life-time would suffice to count the number of the oscillations which it makes within the fraction of one second,—thrills to us out of endlessness;—and the force of infinity dwells in its lightest tremor; the weight of eternity presses behind its faintest shudder. To that phantom-Touch, the tinting of a blossom or the dissipation of a universe were equally facile: here it caresses the eye with the charm and illusion of color; there it bestirs ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn |
