“What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind.”
Part Three, Ch. 11
Source: On the Road (1957)
Context: In 1942 I was the star in one of the filthiest dramas of all time. I was a seaman, and went to the Imperial Café on Scollay Square in Boston to drink; I drank sixty glasses of beer and retired to the toilet, where I wrapped myself around the toilet bowl and went to sleep. During the night at least a hundred seamen and assorted civilians came in and cast their sentient debouchements on me till I was unrecognizably caked. What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind.
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Jack Kerouac266
American writer 1922–1969Related quotes
N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop
Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
Attar of Nishapur (1145–1230) Persian Sufi poet
"All Pervading Consciousness"
Context: Yet what are seas and what is air? For all
Is God, and but a talisman are heaven and earth
To veil Divinity. For heaven and earth,
Did He not permeate them, were but names;
Know then, that both this visible world and that
Which unseen is, alike are God Himself,
Naught is, save God: and all that is, is God.
“and that is what heaven is for, for understanding your life on Earth.”
Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven
“Knowing heaven is what heals us on earth.”
Mitch Albom (1958) American author
Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven
“What makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven.”
Chuck Palahniuk book Damned
Variant: No, it's not fair, but what makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven.
Source: Damned (2011)
“What rage for fame attends both great and small!
Better be damned than mentioned not at all.”
John Wolcot (1738–1819) English satirist
To the Royal Academicians; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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
“Seek on earth what you have found in heaven.”
George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter
As quoted in The Unpractised Heart (1942) by Leonard Alfred George Strong, p. 147