All Quotes By Tag: Eternity

“Fear is to begin with the end in mind. There is no end. Life is eternal. Live life knowing that the end was your past, and the future is only full of beautiful beginnings through an eternity built around God’s love.”

“He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not ‘Who are you?’ but ‘So it was you all the time.’ All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered…He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a man.”

“I only needed to stay one night, but my heart wanted to stay for all eternity.”

“Time is just quantified eternity.”

“Time (again, Time) like the soul, wears many faces, many bodies and climates and attitudes. The past is one face, the present a second and the future yet another.”

“Redemption, n. Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned. The doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religions, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it.”

“We can speak and think only of what exists. And what exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete. It was not or nor shall be different since it is now, all at once, one and continuous.”

“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”

“In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of “faëry lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart’s Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

“I mean, d’you know what eternity is? There’s this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there’s this little bird-“”What little bird?” said Aziraphale suspiciously.”This little bird I’m talking about. And every thousand years-“”The same bird every thousand years?”Crowley hesitated. “Yeah,” he said.”Bloody ancient bird, then.””Okay. And every thousand years this bird flies-“”-limps-“”-flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak-“”Hold on. You can’t do that. Between here and the end of the universe there’s loads of-” The angel waved a hand expansively, if a little unsteadily. “Loads of buggerall, dear boy.””But it gets there anyway,” Crowley persevered.”How?””It doesn’t matter!””It could use a space ship,” said the angel.Crowley subsided a bit. “Yeah,” he said. “If you like. Anyway, this bird-“”Only it is the end of the universe we’re talking about,” said Aziraphale. “So it’d have to be one of those space ships where your descendants are the ones who get out at the other end. You have to tell your descendants, you say, When you get to the Mountain, you’ve got to-” He hesitated. “What havethey got to do?””Sharpen its beak on the mountain,” said Crowley. “And then it flies back-“”-in the space ship-“”And after a thousand years it goes and does it all again,” said Crowley quickly.There was a moment of drunken silence.”Seems a lot of effort just to sharpen a beak,” mused Aziraphale.”Listen,” said Crowley urgently, “the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, right, then-“Aziraphale opened his mouth. Crowley just knew he was going to make some point about the relative hardness of birds’ beaks and granite mountains, and plunged on quickly.”-then you still won’t have finished watching The Sound of Music.”Aziraphale froze.”And you’ll enjoy it,” Crowley said relentlessly. “You really will.””My dear boy-“”You won’t have a choice.””Listen-“”Heaven has no taste.””Now-“”And not one single sushi restaurant.”A look of pain crossed the angel’s suddenly very serious face.”

“In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.”

“There is nothing more important than your eternal salvation.”

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

“In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of — moments when we human beings can say “I love you,” “I’m proud of you,” “I forgive you,” “I’m grateful for you.” That’s what eternity is made of: invisible imperishable good stuff.”

“Every time you do a good deed you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, when you’re gone that light is going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back.”