timelessness

Great literature will insist upon its self-sufficiency in the face of the worthiest causes

The spoken word is ephemeral. The written word, eternal. A symphony, timeless.

The wood-carver can fashion whatever he will. Yet his products are but toys of the moment, to be glanced at in jest, not fashioned according to any precept or law. When times change, the carver too will change his style and make new trifles to hit the fancy of the passing day. But there is another kind of artist, who sets more soberly about his work, striving to give real beauty to the things which men actually use and to give to them the shape which tradition has ordained. This maker of real things must not for a moment be confused with the maker of idle toys.

Meditation is spending time with the self. It is the time to be intimated with the soul.

Beauty is the moment when time vanishes. Beauty is the space where eternity arises.

Why is wisdom so fair? Why is beauty so wise?Because all else is temporary, while beauty and wisdom are the only real and constant aspects of truth that can be perceived by human means.And I don't mean the kind of surface beauty that fades with age, or the sort of shallow wisdom that gets lost in plati

How shallow is the stage on which this vast drama of human hates and joys and friendships is played! Whence do men draw this passion for eternity, flung by chance as they are upon a scarcely cooled bed of lava, threatened by the beginning by the deserts that are to be, under the constant menace of the snows? Their civilizations are but fragile gildings: a volcano can blot them out, a new sea, a sand-storm.

Night after night on starry wingsNight lovers soared so highMiles apart, across the oceansTheir love forgot to sighIn heavenly flight__ timelessnessThat highest height treasuredInto the deepest of all bluesTheir depth of love measured.From the poem 'The Ballad of Night Lovers

We were the only two people in the entire airport who lost total track of time, for we were consumed by space-time at that present moment. Time was irrelevant to our existence, for we didn__ want to exist outside the tight and glorious knots of each other__ arms. Time is basically an illusion created by the mind to aid in our sense of temporal presence in the vast ocean of space. Without the neurons to create a virtual perception of the past and the future based on all our experiences, there is no actual existence of the past and the future. All that there is, is the present.

Beauty is the moment when time vanishes and eternity arises.

...your tranquil yes to the changing over into the formless void of the unlimited.

Stone is a primal matter, inhuman in its duration. Yet despite its incalculable temporality, the lithic is not some vast and alien outside. A limit-breaching intimacy persistently unfolds. Hurl a rock and you'll shatter an ontology, leave taxonomy in glistening shards.

That which is timeless is also the most timely.

The river is now. This moment. This breath between us. The space between your heartbeats. The moment before you blink. The instant a thought flashes through your mind. It is everything that is around us. Life. Energy. Flowing, endlessly flowing, carrying you from then...to now...to tomorrow. Listen: you can hear the music of it. Of the passage of time.

If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style.

There are no telegraphs on Tralfamadore. But you're right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message-- describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

TIME: Today Is My Everything