
“If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now."”
That's my favorite joke.
A Man Without a Country (2005)
Said to be famously attributed to Albert Einstein after hearing him play
1999: Violinist Yehudi Menuhin dies
“If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now."”
That's my favorite joke.
A Man Without a Country (2005)
The Story of Religious Controversy http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/ (1929), p. 86.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
Context: I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist, Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an A. H. A. memorial service for my predecessor I said, "Isaac is up in Heaven now." That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resembling solemnity could be restored.
I made that joke, of course, before my first near-death experience — the accidental one.
So when my own time comes to join the choir invisible or whatever, God forbid, I hope someone will say, "He's up in Heaven now." Who really knows? I could have dreamed all this.
My epitaph in any case? "Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt." I will have gotten off so light, whatever the heck it is that was going on.
“My Lords, if I know what to tell you, or how to tell it, or what to leave altogether untold for the present, may all the gods and goddesses in Heaven bring me to an even worse damnation than I now daily suffer!”
Quid scribam vobis, p[atres]. c[onscripti]., aut quo modo scribam, aut quid omnino non scribam hoc tempore, dii me deaeque peius perdant quam cotidie perire sentio, si scio.
Variant translation: What to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how to write, or what not to write at this time, may all the gods and goddesses pour upon my head a more terrible vengeance than that under which I feel myself daily sinking, if I can tell.
Letter to the Senate, from Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, ch. 67 (cf. Tacitus, Annals, VI 6.1.)
“Damn me to hell or take me to heaven, but for Gods sake, do it now….”
Source: The Stanislaski Brothers: Mikhail and Alex
Statement in al-Quds al-Arabi, as quoted in "Bin Laden: I Didn't Do It" CBS News (12 September 2001); also at Positive Atheism's "Big List of Scary Quotes" http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/scar_l.htm
2000s, 2001
the happening world (6) "Street Seen"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
“Thus heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, is chosen for hell.”
“The Pale Maiden” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1837-pre/verse/verse24.htm (1837) ballad