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Eternity: Quotations from Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations
Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true.— LOCKE — Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bk. IV. Of Wrong Assent or Error. Ch. XX.
Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors than from his virtues.— LONGFELLOW — Hyperion. Bk. IV. Ch. III.
For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.— PLUTARCH — Morals. Against Colotes the
Epicurean. Some positive persisting fops we know, Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so; But you with pleasure own your errors past, And make each day a critique on the last.— POPE — Essay on Criticism. Pt. III. L. 9.
When people once are in the wrong, Each line they add is much too long; Who fastest walks, but walks astray, Is only furthest from his way.— S. PRIOR — Alma. Canto III. L. 194.
How far your eyes may pierce, I cannot tell; Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.— Shakespeare — King Lear. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 368.
It may be right; but you are i' the wrong To speak before your time.— Shakespeare — Measure for Measure. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 86.
Omission to do what is necessary Seals a commission to a blank of danger.— Shakespeare — Troilus and Cressida. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 230.
Purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' heads.— Shakespeare — Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 395.
The error of our eye directs our mind : What error leads must err.— Shakespeare — Troilus and Cressida. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 110.
Shall error in the round of time Still father Truth?— TENNYSON — Love and Duty.
The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.— VOLTAIRE — A Philosophical Dictionary.
Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful thought! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass! aa.— ADDISON — Cato. Act. V. Sc. 1.
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And indicates eternity to man.— ADDISON- — Cato. Act V. Sc. 1.
Then gazing up 'mid the dim pillars high, The foliaged marble forest where ye lie, Hush, ye will say, it is eternity! This is the glimmering verge of heaven, and there The columns of the heavenly palaces.— MATTHEW ARNOLD — The Tomb.
Eternity forbids thee to forget. C.— BYRON — Lara. Canto I. St. 23.
Eternity! How know we but we stand On the precipitous and crumbling verge Of Time e'en now, Eternity below?— ABRAHAM COLES — The Microcosm and .
Other Poems, 1841. P. 125. Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last.— COWLEY — Davideis. Bk. I. L. 360.
That golden key, That opes the palace of eternity.— MILTON — Comus. L. 13.
This speck of life in time's great wilderness This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas, The past, the future, two eternities!— MOORE — Lalla Rookh. The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. St. 42.
The time will come when every change shall cease, This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace: No summer then shall glow, nor winter freeze; Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now shall ever last.— PETRARCH — The Triumph of Eternity. L. 117.
Those spacious regions where our fancies roam, Pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come, In some dread moment, by the fates assign'd, Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind; And Time's revolving wheels shall lose at last The speed that spins the future and the past: And, sovereign of an undisputed throne, Awful eternity shall reign alone.— PETRARCH — The Triumph of Eternity. L. 102.
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.— SHELLEY — Adonais. XXX.