Quotes about hell
page 19

Herman Melville photo

“Indolence is heaven’s ally here,
And energy the child of hell:
The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear
But brims the poisoned well.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Timoleon, Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the Twelfth Century, Fragment 2

John Fletcher photo

“As high as Heaven, as deep as Hell.”

Act IV, scene 1.
The Honest Man's Fortune, (1613; published 1647)

David Hunter photo
James, son of Zebedee photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Marlon Brando photo
Kameron Hurley photo

“She had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn’t make any difference.”

Kameron Hurley (1980) American writer

Source: God’s War (2011), Chapter 1 (p. 6).

George Friedman photo

“Contemporary Europe is a search for an exit from hell.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next Decade: Where We've Been ... And Where We're Going (2010), p. 142

Jay-Z photo

“I sell ice in the winter, I sell fire in hell
I am a hustler, baby, I'll sell water to a well”

Jay-Z (1969) American rapper, businessman, entrepreneur, record executive, songwriter, record producer and investor

U Don't Know
The Blueprint (2001)

Jean Paul Sartre photo
Charlotte Brontë photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Will Eisner photo

“Dialogue in Hell:
Seventeenth Dialogue”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Ivanka Trump photo

“There's a special place in hell for people who prey on children. I've yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims' accounts.”

Ivanka Trump (1981) American businesswoman, socialite, fashion model and daughter of Donald Trump

(November 15, 2017). "Ivanka Trump says child tax credit ‘not a pet project’" Associated Press. https://www.apnews.com/b9a66f37fe074f30ad896bfa9be68ece/Ivanka-Trump-says-child-tax-credit-'not-a-pet-project

Neil Gaiman photo

“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

"somewhat less sinister ducks" Blog entry (23 April 2004) http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/04/somewhat-less-sinister-ducks.asp

John Milton photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
William Lloyd Garrison photo

“Be warned, therefore, that one does not go to hell to light a cigarette.”

Source: This Immortal (1965), p. 83

Ricky Hatton photo

“If you want to watch two guys knock hell out of each other, watch us.”

Ricky Hatton (1978) English former professional boxer

Hatton talking about his opponent José Luis Castillo. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,28910-2559396,00.html
Ricky on other boxers (Sourced)

John Updike photo
Jimmy Hoffa photo

“Hell, I'm not saying I'm an angel, but when it came to dirty tricks I couldn't hold a candle to the Irish Mafia.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 7, Gangsters and the "Irish Mafia", p. 128

Neil Cavuto photo

“It's a good thing Winston Churchill was around before the shallow age of television. He might never have become one of the greatest leaders of all time and — for my money — one of the most charismatic. And, what the hell, also one of the sexiest.”

Neil Cavuto (1958) American television presenter

"Why can't ugly people have charisma?" http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/neilcavuto/2004/07/10/12307.html, townhall.com, (July 10, 2004).

Jordan Peterson photo

“You plunge into that underworld space, and that's also where you begin to nurse feelings of resentment and aggrievement and murder and homicide, and even worse. If people are betrayed enough, they become obsessed with the futility of being itself, and they go to places where perhaps no one would ever want to go if they were in their right mind. And they begin to nurse fantasies of the ultimate revenge, and that's a horrible place to be. And that's hell. That's why hell has always been a suburb of the underworld, because if you get plunged into a situation that you don't understand, and things are not good for you anymore, it's only one step from being completely confused, to being completely outraged and resentful, and then it's only one step from there to really looking for revenge. And that can take you places – well, that merely to imagine properly can be traumatic. And I've seen that with people many times. And I think that anybody who uses their imagination on themselves can see how that happens, because I can't imagine that there isn't a single person in the room who hasn't nursed fairly intense fantasies of revenge, at least at one point in their life – and usually for what appear to be good reasons. It can shake your faith in being to be betrayed, but if it shakes it so badly that you turn against being itself, that's certainly no solution. All it does is make everything that's bad, even worse.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Jean Baudrillard photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Donald J. Trump photo

““Ah, go to hell!”
“That’s a remarkably Christian attitude, Donald. Both meaningless and barbaric.””

the happening world (3) “Domestica”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

A. J. Muste photo
George Gordon Byron photo
Edwin Markham photo
Robert Southwell photo
Ehud Barak photo

“[How is it consistent with what you advocated this evening in terms of a vision for peace, that you continued to allow the building of settlements in the West Bank, during your primeministership? ] Let me tell you, first of all, during my term as a Prime Minister, we have not built a single new settlement. I ordered the dismantling of many voluntary -- I don't know how to call it -- new settlements that had been set on top of hills in different parts of the West Bank, basically. But, I allowed contracts, contracts that had been signed, legally, in Israel, beforehand. To build new neighborhoods in some big cities in the West Bank, cities with 25,000 or 30,000 people. And very few new homes, in small settlements, where youngsters, who came back from the army service, asked to build their home near the home of their parents. Now, Israel is a law-abiding state, you cannot break contracts, there is Supreme Court. If the government behaves in a way that is not proper, any individual can appeal and change whatever we decide. Realizing that this is a sensitive issue from the Palestinian side, I talked to Arafat, at the beginning of my term as a Prime Minister, and I told him: Mr. Chairman, I know that you are worried about it, it creates some problems, in your own constituency. But let me tell you, we have a great opportunity here to put an end to the whole conflict, in a year and a half. When President Clinton that invested unbelievable amount of energy and political capital in trying to solve it, and he's still in power. Now, I understand your problem with settlement if there is no end, there is no time limit, and you are afraid that maybe the accumulation of new settlements will change the nature of the situation, for the worse, from your position. So I tell you, out of our own considerations, independent of you, we have decided not to set even a single new settlement. We will not allow anyone to establish his own private initiatives on the hills, for our own reasons, not because of you. But at the same time I will respect any contract that has been signed, under law, in Israel. But -- and here is a point -- bearing in mind that we can put an end to the conflict, to reach an agreement within a year and a half, why the hell it will matter? To build a new building in Israel takes more than a year and a half, so you won't see any building that is not already emerging from the ground, having it's roof before we can reach an agreement. Now if such a building happens to be in a settlement that will become, under the agreement, part of the new independent Palestine, why the hell you have to care? Take it, use it, put some refugees in it. And if it will happen to be a part of what will be agreed, as Israel, in a mutual agreement that is signed by you, why the hell do you care, if you agree? I believe that that simple answer would not solve his public -- or internal political -- problems, but it would solve the real issue if the will was there to make peace, and not just to politically maneuver and manipulate.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Speech at UC Berkeley http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19324/edition_id/391/format/html/displaystory.html, November 22, 2002

Jane Roberts photo

“Hell is being alive, and being alive is all there is.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 21

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“Johnson: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? I’d like to hear you talk a little bit.
Russell: Well, frankly, Mr. President, it’s the damn worse mess that I ever saw, and I don’t like to brag and I never have been right many times in my life, but I knew that we were going to get into this sort of mess when we went in there. And I don’t see how we’re ever going to get out of it without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles. I just don’t see it. I just don’t know what to do.
Johnson: Well, that’s the way I have been feeling for six months.
Russell: Our position is deteriorating and it looks like the more we try to do for them, the less they are willing to do for themselves. It is a mess and it’s going to get worse, and I don’t know how or what to do. I don’t think the American people are quite ready for us to send our troops in there to do the fighting. If I was going to get out, I’d get the same crowd that got rid of old Diem [the Vietnamese prime minister who was overthrown and assassinated in 1963] to get rid of these people and to get some fellow in there that said we wish to hell we would get out. That would give us a good excuse for getting out.
Johnson: How important is it to us?
Russell: It isn’t important a damn bit for all this new missile stuff.
Johnson: I guess it is important.
Russell: From a psychological standpoint. Other than the question of our word and saving face, that’s the reason that I said that I don’t think that anybody would expect us to stay in there. It’s going to be a headache to anybody that tries to fool with it. You’ve got all the brains in the country, Mr. President—you better get ahold of them. I don’t know what to do about this. I saw it all coming on, but that don’t do any good now, that’s water over the dam and under the bridge. And we are there.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Telephone call with Senator Richard Russell (May 27, 1964)

Muhammad al-Baqir photo

“Fasting is a shield against (hell) fire. Charity and dole remove and finish sin, as does the remembrance of God in the midnight.”

Muhammad al-Baqir (677–733) fifth of the Twelve Shia Imams

Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.2, p. 23

Angelique Rockas photo
Robin Sloan photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Paddy Chayefsky photo
Robert E. Howard photo

“Poor devils, they'll wake up in hell without knowing how they got there.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Black Vulmea's Vengeance" (1938)

Richard Nixon photo

“I didn’t notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don’t know how the hell they avoid it. If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Conversation with Mr. Colson, on tapes recorded February-March 1973 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/3_VIETNAM.mp3; as quoted in "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html, by Adam Nagourney,New York Times (10 December 2010)
1970s

Robert Burns photo

“The fear o' hell 's a hangman's whip
To haud the wretch in order;
But where ye feel your honour grip,
Let that aye be your border.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Stanza 8
Epistle to a Young Friend (1786)

Roger Ebert photo

“Here is how [life] happens. We find something we want to do, if we are lucky, or something we need to do, if we are like most people. We use it as a way to obtain food, shelter, clothing, mates, comfort, a first folio of Shakespeare, model airplanes, American Girl dolls, a handful of rice, sex, solitude, a trip to Venice, Nikes, drinking water, plastic surgery, child care, dogs, medicine, education, cars, spiritual solace -- whatever we think we need. To do this, we enact the role we call "me," trying to brand ourselves as a person who can and should obtain these things.In the process, we place the people in our lives into compartments and define how they should behave to our advantage. Because we cannot force them to follow our desires, we deal with projections of them created in our minds. But they will be contrary and have wills of their own. Eventually new projections of us are dealing with new projections of them. Sometimes versions of ourselves disagree. We succumb to temptation — but, oh, father, what else was I gonna do? I feel like hell. I repent. I'll do it again… This has not been a conventional review. There is no need to name the characters, name the actors, assign adjectives to their acting. Look at who is in this cast. You know what I think of them. This film must not have seemed strange to them. It's what they do all day, especially waiting around for the director to make up his mind.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/synecdoche-new-york-2008 of Synecdoche, New York (5 November 2008)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Frederick Douglass photo
Eugene V. Debs photo

“They who have been reading the capitalist newspapers realize what a capacity they have for lying. We have been reading them lately. They know all about the Socialist Party—the Socialist movement, except what is true. Only the other day they took an article that I had written—and most of you have read it—most of you members of the party, at least—and they made it appear that I had undergone a marvelous transformation. I had suddenly become changed—had in fact come to my senses; I had ceased to be a wicked Socialist, and had become a respectable Socialist, a patriotic Socialist—as if I had ever been anything else. What was the purpose of this deliberate misrepresentation? It is so self-evident that it suggests itself. The purpose was to sow the seeds of dissension in our ranks; to have it appear that we were divided among ourselves; that we were pitted against each other, to our mutual undoing. But Socialists were not born yesterday. They know how to read capitalist newspapers; and to believe exactly the opposite of what they read.
Why should a Socialist be discouraged on the eve of the greatest triumph in all the history of the Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us all — testing days for the women and men who are upholding the banner of labor in the struggle of the working class of all the world against the exploiters of all the world; a time in which the weak and cowardly will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fiber to endure the revolutionary test; they fall away; they disappear as if they had never been. On the other hand, they who are animated by the unconquerable spirit of the social revolution; they who have the moral courage to stand erect and assert their convictions; stand by them; fight for them; go to jail or to hell for them, if need be — they are writing their names, in this crucial hour — they are writing their names in faceless letters in the history of mankind.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Tom Waits photo
Luís de Camões photo

“[She] heard the bitter, heartsick words
that made the fires of Hell burn cold
and soothed the lost spirits under the world.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Ela viu as palavras magoadas,
Que puderam tornar o fogo frio,
E dar descanso as almas condenadas.
tr. David Wevill
Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Aquela triste e leda madrugada

Desmond Tutu photo

“God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he'd rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Beyers Naudé memorial lecture (15 August 2003)

Emil Nolde photo
Ronnie James Dio photo
Báb photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Owen Lovejoy photo

“Is it desired to call attention to this fact? Proclaim it upon the house-tops! Write it upon every leaf that trembles in the forest! Make it blaze from the sun at high noon and shine forth in the radiance of every star that bedecks the firmament of God. Let it echo through all the arches of heaven, and reverberate and bellow through all the deep gorges of hell, where slave catchers will be very likely to hear it. Owen Lovejoy lives at Princeton, Illinois, three-quarters of a mile east of the village, and he aids every fugitive that comes to his door and asks it. Thou invisible demon of slavery! Dost thou think to cross my humble threshold, and forbid me to give bread to the hungry and shelter to the houseless? I bid you defiance in the name of my God.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA178 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 178
Also quoted in The History of Abraham Lincoln, and the Overthrow of Slavery http://books.google.com/books?id=RW0FAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA225, by Isaac Newton Arnold
Also quoted as Yes, I do assist fugitive slaves to escape! Proclaim it upon the house-tops; write it upon every leaf that trembles in the forest; make it blaze from the sun at high noon, and shine forth in the radiance of every star that bedecks the firmament of God. Let it echo through all the arches of heaven, and reverberate and bellow through all the deep gorges of hell, where slave catchers will be very likely to hear it. Owen Lovejoy lives at Princeton, Illinois, and he aids every fugitive that comes to his door and asks it. Thou invisible demon of slavery! Dost thou think to cross my humble threshold, and forbid me to give bread to the hungry and shelter to the houseless? I bid you defiance in the name of God.
1850s, The Fanaticism of the Democratic Party (February 1859)

Kent Hovind photo
Thomas Brooks photo
John Flavel photo
Desmond Tutu photo
Kid Cudi photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
John Davidson photo
Angela of Foligno photo
George Washington Carver photo

“When our thoughts — which bring actions — are filled with hate against anyone, Negro or white, we are in a living hell. That is as real as hell will ever be.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

Quoted in Linda O. McMurray, George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol (Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 107

Raymond Chandler photo
Robert Graves photo
Charles Bernstein photo

“Not for all the fire in hell
Not for all the blue in the sky
Not for an empire of my own
Not even for peace of mind”

Charles Bernstein (1950) American writer

"All the Whiskey in Heaven" http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080303/bernstein, The Nation, 3 March 2008

T. H. White photo

“God is love, the bishops tell.
Yes, I know, But love is hell.”

T. H. White (1906–1964) author

"All For Love".

Christopher Hitchens photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.”

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ (1951), Ch. 18

Barry Goldwater photo

“I said one day that Dole had a temper, and he got madder than hell. He has one. He has a mean one.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Washington Post interview (1994)

Claude McKay photo

“Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does to the light who puts out his own eyes.”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

As quoted in Art and the Message of the Church (1961) by Walter Ludwig Nathan, p. 120.

Alfred Noyes photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Northrop Frye photo

“Read Blake or go to hell, that's my message to the modern world.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Letter to Helen Kemp, 1935, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932-1939, (1996), p. 1:426
"Quotes"

Ammon Hennacy photo

“I love my enemies, but am hell on my friends.”

Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970) American Christian radical

[The Book of Ammon, 1970, Hennacy, 205]

Roberto Clemente photo
Anthony Wayne photo

“Issue the orders Sir, and I will storm Hell.”

Anthony Wayne (1745–1796) Continental Army general

when asked by General George Washington if he would undertake the capture of Stony Point
Attributed

Harry Chapin photo
Francis de Sales photo
Will Eisner photo

“International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia) Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemborg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
Graves: This was written by Winston Churchill, a highly regarded M. P. in England…so, I need hardly remind you that it will take strong evidence to prove the “Protocols” ‘’’a fake!’’’
Raslovlev: At an old bookshop I got a copy of “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu,” by Maurice Joly, 1864.
I examined what I had. It was obvious that the “Protocols of Zion” was copied from it.
Graves: How did you get this?
Raslovlev: I bought this book from a friend, formerly of the Okhrana, our secret agents in France. They ordered the plagiarism!
When the Bolsheviks came in, we left with what we could take out with us.
How much is it worth to you, or your paper, Mr. Graves?
Graves: Hmm…can’t say yet! …Is Geneva really the place of publication??
Raslovlev: I do know that the “Protocols of Zion: was intended to prove to the Tsar that the Revolt in Russia was a Jewish Plot…it was written by an Okhrana agent…a plagiarist, Mathieu Golovinski!
When it was first published in Russia round 1902, its publisher, Dr. Nilus, claimed it to be notes stolen from an 1897 Zionist congress by French agents!
Graves: But that congress was convened by Theodore Herzl to promote a Jewish state. It was not a secret meeting…Dr. Nilus’s claim is a lie!
Raslovlev: Yes, it is indeed! Let me show you…we will compare the “Protocols” with Joly’s Book.
Raslovlev: Set them side by side Graves, and you will see obvious plagiarism of Joly’s “dialogue!”
Graves: I see…be patient while I go through it…yes! Yes! Yes!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 70-73

Stanisław Lem photo
Jerome David Salinger photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Will Eisner photo
Paolo Bacigalupi photo
Truman Capote photo
Amir Khusrow photo

“They pursued die enemy to the gates and set everything on fire. They burnt down all those gardens and groves. That paradise of idol-worshippers became like hell. The fire-worshippers of Bud were in alarm and flocked round their idols…”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

About Sultan Mubarak Shah Khalji (AD 1316-1320) in Warrangal (Andhra Pradesh) Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians,Vol. III, p. 559
Nuh Siphir

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“There are countless circles of hell; believers never penetrate the ninth circle.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Inferno,” p. 151
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999)