Walter Benjamin

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.

First line of Walter Banjamin's Fifth Theses on the Philosophy of History

Giorgio Agamben and Puech

In contrast with the Hellenic world, for the Christian the world is created within time and must end with time. At one end, the account of Genesis, at the other, the eschatological perspective of the Apocalypse. . .This uniquely fashioned universe which began, which endures and which end within time, is a finite world enclosed by the two edges of history. Its duration comprises neither the eternal nor the infinite, and the events which unfold within it will never be repeated.

Puech quoted by Giorgio Agamben in Critique of the Instant and the Continiuum.
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