The passages consider what time is and how it differs from eternity. The Psalm, Plato, Augustine and Boethius set an unchanging God or being outside time, and Plato and Augustine have time made along with the world. Boethius defines eternity as possessing the whole of endless life at once. Lucretius denies time any existence of its own apart from things in motion and at rest. Ovid’s Pythagoras and Marcus Aurelius both compare time to a river that carries everything away.
Chosen by hand, not counted: a passage is here when it is plainly about the topic, and the list is not every mention. Each is shown in the order the books were written, and each links to the section it is in.
God is from eternity to eternity, and a thousand years in his sight are as yesterday.
Before the mountains were made, or the earth and the world was formed; from eternity and to eternity thou art God. Psalm 89 →The creator makes time as a moving image of eternity; ‘was’ and ‘will be’ belong only to becoming.
… Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image of eternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity; and this image we call time. For there were no days and nights and months and years before the heaven was created, but when he constructed the heaven he created them also. … Part 2 →Lucretius says time does not exist of itself, but only as sensed in the motion and rest of things.
… Even time exists not of itself; but sense Reads out of things what happened long ago, What presses now, and what shall follow after: No man, we must admit, feels time itself, Disjoined from motion and repose of things. … Book 1 →Pythagoras says time glides on like a river, each moment pressed on by the next.
… Even time itself glides on with a constant progress, no otherwise than a river. For neither can the river, nor the fleeting hour stop in its course; but, as wave is impelled by wave, and the one before is pressed on by that which follows, and itself presses on that before it; so do the moments similarly fly on, and similarly do they follow, and they are ever renewed. For the moment which was before, is past; … Book 15 →Time is a river of events: each thing is seen and at once carried away.
Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too. Book 4 →Augustine asks what time is, knowing until he is asked, and says God made time itself.
… For what is time? Who can readily and briefly explain this? Who can even in thought comprehend it, so as to utter a word about it? But what in discourse do we mention more familiarly and knowingly, than time? And, we understand, when we speak of it; we understand also, when we hear it spoken of by another. What then is time? … Book 11 →Philosophy defines eternity as the whole and perfect possession of endless life at a single moment.
… Now, eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment. What this is becomes more clear and manifest from a comparison with things temporal. For whatever lives in time is a present proceeding from the past to the future, and there is nothing set in time which can embrace the whole space of its life together. To-morrow's state it grasps not yet, while it has already lost yesterday's; … Book 5 →