They wanted eternal life; he gave them perpetual motion. It comes to the same thing, for such a race. - John Crowley

When she [Elizabeth, Princess of Bohemia] went to take the waters at Spa, he [René Descartes] wrote to her that to get any benefit from them she should free her mind from all sorts of sad thoughts and even from serious reflections, because those who look long on the green of the forest, the colors of a flower, the flight of a bird, can beguile themselves into not thinking, or thinking of nothing. 'Which is not wasting time but using it well.

Just as a lamp waved in darkness creates a figure of light in the air, which remains for as long as the lamp repeats its motion exactly, so the universe retains its shape by repetition: the universe is Time's body. And how will we perceive this body? And how operate on it? Not by the means we perceive extension, relation, color, form — the qualities of Space. … No: but by the means we perceive duration and repetition and change: by Memory.

I couldn’t weep here, any more than I could hope. Of course he couldn’t stay: and much as I wanted him by me, I wanted even more that my friend have what he wanted for himself.