Careful Words

perpetual (adj.)

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ode. Intimations of Immortality. Stanza 9.

  I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act i. Sc. 2.

  Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881): State of German Literature. Edinburgh Review, 1827.