Then God – may He be exalted! – said to me, “What are you?” I replied, “I am two things, according to two different relations. With respect to You, I am the Eternal, forever and ever. I am the necessary Being who epiphanizes himself. My necessity proceeds from the necessity of Your essence and my eternity from the eternity of Your knowledge and Your attributes. “With respect to me, I am pure non-being who has never breathed the perfume of existence, the adventitious being who remains nonexistent in his adventitiousness. I only possess being so long as I am present with You and for You. Left to myself and absent from You I am one who is not, even while he is (fa-ana mafqud mawjud).”

Abd al-Kader

Source: The Spiritual Writings of ‘Abd al-Kader, 1995, Kitab al-Mawaqif, 30, pp. 77-78

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

Albert Camus

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest. The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Alexander Pope

Source: Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 95.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Source: Quotes on Eternity at Zaadz