Quote Atlassourced quotes & context
Source identified
Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.
Read & copy the quotation
“Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.”

Andrew Marvell

Source
To His Coy Mistress
Date
1681
Meaning

Meaning of “Had we but world enough, and time, This…”

Marvell’s speaker begins a carpe-diem argument by imagining unlimited time, using that impossible condition to prepare his later case for acting before mortality closes opportunity.

Source context

Where does it come from?

“To His Coy Mistress,” posthumously published in Miscellaneous Poems (1681), represented by Representative Poetry Online. The poem is a dramatic seduction argument by a speaker, not neutral advice about consent, relationships or urgency.

Primary / edition source ↗

Customize your imageTen designs · Square or portrait · Preview and share
Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

Life Is ShortLovePresent MomentRelationshipShortThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionTimeTrust
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
Time, not the will, can put an end to love.
Image design Midnight
Read & copy

“Time, not the will, can put an end to love.”

Publilius Syrus · The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus · 1st century BCE
Meaning & context

The maxim distinguishes deliberate decision from emotional change, suggesting that some attachments fade through time rather than a single act of will.

Source details

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, saying 43, D. Lyman Jr. translation (1856).

Source identified
I never forgot her; but the pang of remembrance lost its worst bitterness, little by little.
Image design Linen
Read & copy

“I never forgot her; but the pang of remembrance lost its worst bitterness, little by little.”

Wilkie Collins · The Moonstone · 1868
Meaning & context

Franklin Blake says distance and new experience reduced the sharpest pain of remembering Rachel without erasing the attachment itself.

Source details

The Moonstone, Project Gutenberg #155. Franklin Blake narrates his attempt to recover after leaving England; the sentence continues by explaining the effects of time, distance and novelty. This is fictional reflection, not clinical guidance.

Source identified
It is eternity now.
Image design Golden Hour
Read & copy

“It is eternity now.”

Richard Jefferies · The Story of My Heart · 1883
Meaning & context

Jefferies collapses ordinary chronological distinctions into an intensely experienced present, describing the current moment as participation in eternity rather than a point merely passing toward the future.

Source details

The Story of My Heart (1883), Chapter III, Project Gutenberg #2317. The inherited Chapter I note is corrected: ‘It is eternity now’ occurs in Jefferies’s tumulus meditation after he writes that, recognising his inner consciousness / psyche, he cannot understand time. It is speculative spiritual autobiography and metaphysical-poetic reflection, not a scientific theory of time, physics or consciousness.

Source identified
The future is yet to come
Image design Lavender
Read & copy

“The future is yet to come”

William Hazlitt · On the Past and Future · 1821
Meaning & context

The brief phrase anchors Hazlitt’s argument that the future does not possess greater reality merely because it has not happened yet; he compares its status with the already completed past.

Source details

Table-Talk, Volume I, Essay III, “On the Past and Future,” Project Gutenberg #3020. “The future is yet to come” occurs in Hazlitt’s comparison of the already-existing past with the not-yet-existing future: the full sentence continues that the future “has never been anything.” The retained short excerpt is therefore part of a philosophical contrast, not a prediction, forecasting rule or scientific proposition.

Source identified
Forever — is composed of Nows —
Image design Golden Hour
Read & copy

“Forever — is composed of Nows —”

Emily Dickinson · Poem 690 · c. 1863
Meaning & context

The future and the infinite are made from successive present moments, giving ordinary time a larger philosophical significance.

Source details

Poem 690; Dickinson builds the abstract idea of eternity from individual present moments.

Source identified
Love has no age, no limit, and no death.
Image design Linen
Read & copy

“Love has no age, no limit, and no death.”

John Galsworthy · Indian Summer of a Forsyte · 1918
Meaning & context

Irene answers an older man’s skepticism by insisting that love is not confined by age and does not simply vanish when a person or relationship passes away.

Source details

Indian Summer of a Forsyte, represented in Project Gutenberg #2594. Irene says the line to old Jolyon while speaking about her dead lover; it is emotionally charged fictional dialogue, and the surrounding conversation immediately gives old Jolyon a more ironic response.