“Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up between two eternities!”

Ah, yet, e’er I descend to th’ grave, May I a small House and a large Garden have. And a few Friends, and many Books both true

Books should, not Business, entertain the Light; And Sleep, as undisturb’d as Death, the Night.

It is a hard and nice subject for a man to speak of himself: it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader’s ear to hear anything of praise from him.

Till the whole stream, which stopped him, should be gone, That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on.

Lukewarmness I account a sin, as great in love as in religion.

Nay, in death’s hand, the grape-stone proves As strong as thunder is in Jove’s.

May I a small house and large garden have; And a few friends, And many books, both true.

His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong; his life, I’m sure, was in the right.

Who that has reason, and his smell, Would not among roses and jasmin dwell?

In fields d’or or d’argent; but, if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms.”

What a brave privilege is it to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving or paying all kinds of ceremonies!

Water and air He for the Tenor chose, Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose,

Coy Nature, (which remain’d, though aged grown, A beauteous virgin still, enjoy’d by none, Nor seen unveil’d by anyone),

There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for, if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter.

What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my own?

I would not fear nor wish my fate, but boldly say each night, to-morrow let my sun his beams display, or in clouds hide them; I have lived today.

The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.

Don’t you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour — but a little bit of eternity dropped in your hands — and who knows what to do with it?

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.

The kinds of truth that art gives us many, many times are small truths. They don’t have the resonance of an encyclical from the Pope stating an eternal truth, but they partake of the quality of eternity. There is a sort of timeless delight in them.

The world that you can go walk outside and walk around the block. That’s reality. The reality that’s being talked about is something else entirely.

Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.