I'm minded of an epitaph proposed for the 300 Spartans who died at Thermopylae … not that different from the early quote in your post:
Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
Of course, this is as much legend as anything, although I'm not saying it reduces the power of the words. (Sadly I've seen it displayed as the great defence against the evils of Islam, rather strangely as the event took place long before Islam (or Christianity for that matter) ever existed.
Another wonderful quote famously used by Robert Oppenheimer after he witnessed the first atomic explosion, in which he himself pretty much played a major part, was:
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
This was taken from the Hindu text Bhagavad Gita. But it is interesting that this is down to translation by western scholars. Another translation I've read is that the text reads:
"I am time, destroyer of all things."
The reason I kind of like the second one is that it pretty much echoes a fundamental law of physics called the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
But you have draw your own conclusions, I'm inclined to go with what you might possibly think is the more pessimistic view. (On these sorts of time scales, none of it means shit anyway.)
