Temporal Quotes

“Being temporary doesn't make something matter any less, because the point isn't for how long, the point is that it happened.”
― Robyn Schneider, Extraordinary Means

“We may like to combat disease or even want to cure death. We may try to surf on the waves of infinity and attempt to kill mortality. Nobody, though, ever recovers from the lethal illness. In the meantime, we’d better unlock temporal moments that deliver touches of eternity. They, for sure, never disappoint. (" Living on probation")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“We are what we are: a handful of dust, and although life remains a temporal enterprise, we recognize we have a mission. Through resilience and empathy, we can take a walk on the path of thought and wonder and brighten up the hazy remains of the day. (“A handful of dust”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Today is an ephemeral ghost...

A strange amazing day that comes only once every four years. For the rest of the time it does not "exist."

In mundane terms, it marks a "leap" in time, when the calendar is adjusted to make up for extra seconds accumulated over the preceding three years due to the rotation of the earth. A day of temporal tune up!

But this day holds another secret—it contains one of those truly rare moments of delightful transience and light uncertainty that only exist on the razor edge of things, along a buzzing plane of quantum probability...

A day of unlocked potential.

Will you or won't you? Should you or shouldn't you?

Use this day to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability!”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.”
― Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion

“Everything that I hold will eventually be gone. Subsequently, the quality of my life will depend on whether I choose to appreciate those things ‘now’ or wait until ‘then.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Huge difference between being happy at will, and chasing euphoric moments as an escape. One doesn't cost a dime, the other will tax your soul.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“It would be better for you to turn around and go into the thick grasses, there where one of those strange grassy islets in the riverbed will completely cover you, it would be better if you do this for once and for all, because if you come back tomorrow, or after tomorrow, there will be no one at all to understand, no one to look, not even a single one among all your natural enemies that will be able to see who you really are; it would be better for you to go away this very evening when twilight begins to fall, it would be better for you to retreat with the others, if night begins to descend, and you should not come back if tomorrow, or after tomorrow, dawn breaks, because for you it will be much better for there to be no tomorrow and no day after tomorrow; so hide away now in the grass, sink down, fall onto your side, let your eyes slowly close, and die, for there is no point in the sublimity that you bear, die at midnight in the grass, sink down and fall, and let it be like that — breathe your last.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Seiobo There Below

“The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits

“It is altogether fitting and proper that we should enjoy things made for us to enjoy. What is not at all fitting or proper is that we should set our hearts on them. Temporal things must be treated as temporal things - received, given thanks for, offered back, but enjoyed. They must not be treated like eternal things.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Discipline: The Glad Surrender

“Only because a bird doesn't swim in the ocean but flies in the air can it enter the ocean from above; only because God is not temporal can he enter into time.”
― Peter Kreeft, Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics

“If your educe sculpture to the flat plane of the temporal experience of the work. (...) the experience of the work is inseparable from the place in which the work resides. Apart from that condition, any experience of the work is a deception.”
― Richard Serra

“A leader’s cross is the temporal pain they go through and his crown is the permanent gain when at last victory is achieved.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“How much less, then, is the disorder to be tolerated that arises when a Christian leaves his office and takes upon him a temporal office, or when a bishop or pastor leaves his office and takes upon him the office of a prince or judge; or, on the other hand, when a prince takes up the office of a bishop and lets his princely office go? Even today this shameful disorder rages and rules in the whole papacy, contrary to their own canons and laws.”
― Martin Luther, On War Against the Turk

“One of the things I think is true, which is a way of thinking about the afterlife of slavery in regard to how we inhabit historical time, is the sense of temporal entanglement, where the past, the present and the future, are not discrete and cut off from one another, but rather that we live the simultaneity of that entanglement. This is almost common sense to Black folk. How does one narrate that?”
― Saidiya Hartman

“It was here long before me, and I always assumed it would exist long after. Perhaps that’s what hurt the most; realizing the fleeting nature of even the most monolithic of objects.”
― Mackenzie Finklea, Beyond the Halls: An Insider's Guide to Loving Museums

“Sure, nothing lasts forever, but don’t focus on things that might end...enjoy them for what they are today. No one knows what tomorrow might bring.”
― Mackenzie Finklea, Beyond the Halls: An Insider's Guide to Loving Museums

“To seek after righteousness is not to pursue temporal things”
― Sunday Adelaja

“A job is a temporary need”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Todo es temporal, las emociones, los sentimientos, las personas, tú, yo, la vida... No te apegues a nada, solo disfruta este momento y deja que todo fluya a su ritmo.”
― Ignacio Novo

“Our temporal residence on earth must be lived with all eagerness.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“We are travellers in a temporary world.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Reality is not temporal, it’s digital... all experiential realities are digital, i.e., information theoretic and observer-centric — you can’t get rid of the centrality of observers. Time, or more specifically, the flow of time, is not fundamental, neither is space, nor is mass-energy. Deep down it's pure information — waves of potentiality — and consciousness assigning 'measurement values' to it all.”
― Alex M. Vikoulov, The Physics of Time: D-Theory of Time & Temporal Mechanics

“Can one instant of ecstasy redeem a life of despair? Maybe only an artist could live that kind of life. Can beauty exist in heaven where nothing ever changes, where nothing dies or grows old, where there’s no cycle of death and rebirth, no seasons of growth and decay? How can there be beauty when everything is beautiful? Maybe beauty, true beauty, exists only when it’s perishable, already containing the seeds of ugliness.”
― Mike Hockney, The Armageddon Conspiracy

“The temporal, contingent world is, as Leibniz said, a “collection of finite things.” It is possible only because it is underpinned by an eternal, necessary world, comprising a collection of zero-infinity things, i.e. monads.”
― Thomas Stark, God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics

“The ultimate cause of matter must be immaterial. The ultimate cause of entropy must be free of entropy. The ultimate cause of time must be outside time. The ultimate cause of space must be outside space. The ultimate cause of temperature must be without temperature. The ultimate cause of physical motion must be without physical motion. Why? Because everything on the left belongs to the temporal and contingent while everything on the right belongs to the eternal and necessary. Only the latter can explain the former. The former cannot explain themselves. The latter belong to the order of eternal truths.”
― Thomas Stark, God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics

“We prefer the temporary, which, when renewed, points to the eternal. If the castle is rebuilt out of wood after every earthquake, then it's as if it were a living being, you understand?”
― Catherine Meurisse, La jeune femme et la mer

“İnsanlık öldü mü?" dedim.
"Yok," dedi, "ölmedi, ölmedi ama, bir şeyler oldu, başka bir yer­lerde sıkıştı kaldı herhalde?"
"Nerede kaldı acaba?"
Mahmudun yüzü bir sevinç ışığında şakıdı. İnsanlık belki Mah­mudun bu ağız dolusu gülüşünde, bu yürek dolusu sevincindedir, kim bilir, belki...
"Kuşlar da gitti," dedi Mahmut.
Sonra hiç konuşmadık. Kuşlar da gitti, kuşlarla birlikte de... Ne olacak, kuşlar da gitti.”
― Yaşar Kemal, Kuşlar da Gitti

“The voice in the wilderness echoes in eternity because it isn't drowned by temporal applause”
― Dean Cavanagh