Quotes about hell
page 2

“She crouched with her hand out. What the hell was she doing…
"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."
Oh my God, she was retarded and I was going to kill Jim.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Curran

God

“New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Time, New Year

“The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: The Anti-Christ

Way

“animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that's why we get along”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

Animals

“Some imagine the difference between heaven and hell to be a matter of geography. Not so. The difference is much more evident in the individuals who dwell there.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Keys to the Demon Prison

Imagination

“I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Stupidity, Intelligence

“Though there is not always grace where there is the fear of hell, yet, to be sure, there is no grace where there is no fear of God.”

John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher

God, Fear

“Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there….”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)
Variant: The principal difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.

“To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”

Eugene O'Neill The Iceman Cometh

Source: The Iceman Cometh

Life, Truth, Lie, World

“I don't care where I'm from. Nor where I'm going. From hell to hell.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

“it's the proper morning to fly into Hell.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Source: The Crucible

Flying

“Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

This appears to be a variation of a quote often attributed to Caskie Stinnett in 1960, "A diplomat...is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip" https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kcycAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA90&dq=%22A+diplomat+is+a+person+who+can+tell+you+to+go+to+hell+in+such+a+way+that+you+actually+look+forward+to+the+trip.%22 but which appears to have been in common use in the 1950s and is first recorded in the Seattle Daily Times in 1953 as "Diplomat—one who can tell you to go to hades and make you look forward to the trip". http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/a_diplomat_is_a_person_who_can_tell_you_to_go_to_hell_so_that_you_look_forw/ Misattributed Variant: Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions

Way

“Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering.”

Jonathan Edwards book Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Source: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Men

“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Variant: Alone. Yes, that’s the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn’t hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym…
Source: 'Salem's Lot

“The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. / What matter where, if I be still the same…”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

i.254-255
Paradise Lost (1667)
Variant: The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.
Source: Paradise Lost: Books 1-2

“The people on the edge of Hell were most afraid of the devil; for those already in hell the devil was only another and no one in particular.”

Joanne Greenberg book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Source: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

People

“Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,
And all their ministers attend on him.”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

Death

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

Way, Boy, Fish, Water

“those who escape hell
however
never talk about
it
and nothing much
bothers them
after
that.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Hell is being alone.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl

“The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Tree

“There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.”

Terry Pratchett book Feet of Clay

Source: Feet of Clay

Health, Law

“Very few people do this any more. It's too risky. First of all, it's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

People

“Every one who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 3, Aphorism 10
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Variant: Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell...

“Who dares think one thing, and another tell,
My heart detests him as the gates of hell.”

Homér Iliad

IX. 312–313 (tr. Alexander Pope).
A. H. Chase and W. G. Perry, Jr.'s translation:
: Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is the man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: The Iliad

Thinking, Heart

“Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

People

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Variant: If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.
Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 8

Time, Flying

“Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.”

Jim Butcher book Vignette

Stupidity, World, Evil

“Hell, I am young. I am free. My teeth are clean. The sun shines. To hell with everything else”

Stephen Fry book Making History

Source: Making History

Sun

“We are not men, to have need of another, an eternal life; we are women, and for us one moment with man we love is everlasting Paradise, one moment far from the man we love is everlasting hell. It is here on earth that we women love out eternity”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ

Love, Life, Women, Men

“The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as "Things just happen. What the hell".”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

“Ohmygod. Did hell just freeze over?" - Zoey Redbird when Aphrodite LaFonte tells her parents that Zoey deserves to be leader of the Dark Daughters”

P. C. Cast book Betrayed

Source: Betrayed

Parent, Daughters

“I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,
To die upon the hand I love so well.”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Love

“Zoey~ 'Listen to me, whinning about money and a scarf. Ah, hell! I'm starting to sound like Aphrodite.'
Stark~ 'If you turn into Aprodite I'm going to stab myself.'
Zoey~ 'If I turn into Aprodite, stab me first.'
Stark~ 'Deal.'
Zoey~ 'Deal.”

P. C. Cast book Awakened

Source: Awakened

Money

“Hell is the inability to love.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love

“no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop your books and run like hell”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Books, Teachers

“The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Feeling, Dance

“Parting is all we know of Heaven,
and all we need of Hell.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Parting

“There was only one thing the perfume could not do. It could not turn him into a person who could love and be loved like everyone else. So, to hell with it he thought. To hell with the world. With the perfume. With himself”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Love, World, Personality

“Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

“I go and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

“First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Books

“O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Love

“If I was on the road to Hell, at least I was going in style.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

“The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

Change, Personality

“Feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Midnight Bayou

Feeling

“When you dance with the devil, it might as well be a devil who can give you your own corner of hell to rule.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Dance

“Love can really screw you up before you figure out how to live with it. And once you do? You wonder how the hell you ever lived without it”

Nora Roberts book Bed of Roses

Source: Bed of Roses

Love

“Harry Dresden: I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family.”

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: The Dresden Files, Proven Guilty (2006)

People, Family

“In the very depths of Hell, do not demons love one another?”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love

“So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Way, Soul

“One sees more devils than vast hell can hold”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair… the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Hate, World, Despair

“I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Angels

“I really had no control over my cat. Hell, who actually had control over any cat?”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Cats

“I don't like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Worth dying for. Worth killing for. Worth going to hell for. Amen.”

Frank Miller book The Hard Goodbye

Source: The Hard Goodbye

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book Marina

Source: Marina

“I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Football. Bloody hell.”

Alex Ferguson (1941) Scottish footballer and manager

Football

“Your Bracelet," she said. "Acheronta movebo.' It doesn't mean 'Thus always to tyrants.' That's 'sic semper tyrannis.' This is from Virgil. 'Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.' If I cannot move Heaven, I will raise Hell.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

“What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.

As translated by Michael Hamburger”

Friedrich Hölderlin book Hyperion

Hyperion
Original: (de) Immerhin hat das den Staat zur Hölle gemacht, daß ihn der Mensch zu seinem Himmel machen wollte.

“Ah, the Wonderful World of Camping - may it rot in hell.”

P. C. Cast book Divine By Mistake

Source: Divine By Mistake

World

“I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Source: Lettres à Génica Athanasiou

Pain, Angels, Understanding

“They say that in the second before our death, each of us understands the real reason for our existence, and out of that moment, heaven or hell is born.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Death, Understanding

“I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, "To hell with you."”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Quoted in "Feeling Rejected? Join Updike, Mailer, Oates..." by Barbara Bauer and Robert F. Moss, New York Times (21 July 1985), section 7, page 1, column 1
General sources

Heart

“Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that is was a living hell. It wasn't. But is sure as hell wasn't heaven, either.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Sense

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Motivational, Funny, Success, Peaceful

“The hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is.”

Eddie Van Halen (1955) Dutch-American rock musician

“I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

Imagination, Wine

“Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

God

“Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life, World

“I mean, we're all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren't we?”

Robert Ludlum book The Bourne Identity

Source: The Bourne Identity

“Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods.”

Peter A. Levine (1942) American psychologist

God

“What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside of me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life--me, so calm and peaceful?”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life, Peace

“To hell with facts! We need stories!”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell;
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

Law, Strong

“ohmygod. did all hell just freeze over?”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

“I closed my eyes, bowed my head and thought, AH, HELL…”

P. C. Cast book Destined

Source: Destined

“To hell with them. Nothing hurts if you don't let it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Hurt

“For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”

William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets

Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Art, Night

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Thomas Paine book The American Crisis

The Crisis No. I (written 19 December 1776, published 23 December 1776).
Source: 1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)
Context: THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

“Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Love

“Before I die many will die with me and they'll deserve it. See you in Hell.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

“Hell needed horribly bright, self-centered people like Eric. They were much better at being nasty than demons could ever manage”

Terry Pratchett book Eric

Source: Eric

People

“Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

“I also hate people to ask cheerfully how you are when they know you're feeling like hell and expect you to say "fine”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Hate, People, Feeling

“I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

From a personal conversation, quoted from memory by Maxim Gorky in "V.I. Lenin" (1924) http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorky-maxim/1924/01/x01.htm  Attributions Context: I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to it every day. What astonishing, superhuman music! It always makes me proud, perhaps with a childish naiveté, to think that people can work such miracles! … But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. These days, one can’t pat anyone on the head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. Hence, you have to beat people's little heads, beat mercilessly, although ideally we are against doing any violence to people. Hm — what a devillishly difficult job!

People, Stupidity, Beauty, Music

“Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?
Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death.
Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.
Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.
Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Death, Fools, Soul, Thinking

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Life, People, Way

“Whoever is in control of the hell in your life, is your devil.”

John Henrik Clarke (1915–1998) American historian and writer

Life

“And just when you’d think [humans] were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they occasionally showed more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Dreams, Thinking

“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U. S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Al-Jazeera interview, (21 October 2001), as reported in "Bin Laden's sole post-September 11 TV interview aired" CNN (31 January 2002) http://articles.cnn.com/2002-01-31/us/gen.binladen.interview_1_al-jazeera-qatar-based-network-bin-laden?_s=PM:US. 2000s, 2002

Life, People, Freedom