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- Shall not this bygone Eden that we knew
- In our Eternal Life have shape and hue?
- For where Time is not shall not all Time be?
- In that calm breast whereto our souls are cleaving
- Shall we not find our loved ones beyond grieving
- About the hearth-stone of Eternity?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE, "Memory and Hope"
Beauty is a precarious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well. Often it seems to me to be an evil flower of nothingness, or else the cry of the world as it dies, or a desperate, sumptuous prayer.
EUGENE IONESCO, Present Past / Past Present
Time ... thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Rape of Lucrece
- Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
- To lay their just hands on that golden key
- That opes the palace of Eternity.
Man passes; he knows that he is dust; nothing is more evident than his frailty. If he should for a single moment forget it, what a chorus of voices would recall it to him! And yet, in the drop of existence which he absorbs, he takes in ages through memory and ages through presentiment. In the moments as they pass, he dimly sees eternity, and more than this, he possesses it by anticipation.
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