Plotinus

“ Thus whatever time seizes and seals to itself of what stands permanent in eternity is annihilated—saved only in so far as in some degree it still belongs to eternity, but wholly destroyed if it be unreservedly absorbed into time. ”

“ If Happiness demands the possession of the good of life, it clearly has to do with the life of Authentic-Existence, for that life is the Best. Now the life of Authentic-Existence is measurable not by time but by eternity; and eternity is not a more or less or a thing of any magnitude but is the unchangeable, the indivisible, is timeless Being. ”

“ It might be thought that the Happiness of longer date must surpass the shorter by virtue of the greater number of acts it included.
But, to begin with, men quite outside of the active life may attain the state of felicity, and not in a less but in a greater degree than men of affairs.
Secondly, the good does not derive from the act itself but from the inner disposition which prompts the noble conduct: the wise and good man in his very action harvests the good not by what he does but by what he is. ”

“ We must not muddle together Being and Non-Being, time and eternity, not even everlasting time with the eternal; we cannot make laps and stages of an absolute unity; all must be taken together, wheresoever and howsoever we handle it; and it must be taken at that, not even as an undivided block of time but as the Life of Eternity, a stretch not made up of periods but completely rounded, outside of all notion of time.
8 It may be urged that the actual presence of past experiences, kept present by Memory, gives the advantage to the man of the longer felicity. ”

“ But if the constitution did not deteriorate, if the mischief grew no worse, then, here too, there would be no trouble but that of the present moment: we cannot tell the past into the tale of unhappiness except in the sense that it has gone to make up an actually existing state—in the sense that, the evil in the sufferer’s condition having been extended over a longer time, the mischief has gained ground. The increase of ill-being, then, is due to the aggravation of the malady, not to the extension of time. ”

“ Memory either of formerly attained wisdom and virtue—in which case we have a better man and the argument from memory is given up—or memory of past pleasures, as if the man that has arrived at felicity must roam far and wide in search of gratifications and is not contented by the bliss actually within him. ”

“ In the matter of sorrows and pains there is, no doubt, ground for saying that time brings increase: for example, in a lingering malady the evil hardens into a state, and as time goes on the body is brought lower and lower. ”

“ That is the resource of a man whose life is without beauty in the present, so that, for lack of it now, he grasps at the memory of what has been.
10 But, it may be said, length of time produces an abundance of good actions missed by the man whose attainment of the happy state is recent—if indeed we can think at all of a state of happiness where good actions have been few. ”

“ If these last are better off, they are so as men in possession of happiness against men without it and their advantage is always by something in the present.
6 Well, but take the unhappy man: must not increase of time bring an increase of his unhappiness? Do not all troubles—long-lasting pains, sorrows, and everything of that type—yield a greater sum of misery in the longer time? And if thus in misery the evil is augmented by time why should not time equally augment happiness when all is well? ”

“ Further, when the will attains what it was seeking, it attains something present: the quest is always for something to be actually present until a standing felicity is definitely achieved. The will to life which is will to Existence aims at something present, since Existence must be a stably present thing. Even when the act of the will is directed towards the future, and the furthest future, its object is an actually present having and being: there is no concern about what is passed or to come: the future state a man seeks is to be a now to him ”