Quotes about heaven
page 15

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Andrew Lang (1879), with S. H. Butcher, prose translation of Homer's Odyssey, Book XVII, line 484.

“It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety, to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence — the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires — without marking in them all the mighty hand of God, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works.”

Timothy Dwight IV (1752–1817) American historian

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 273.

God, Feeling, Mountain, Strong

“Loveliest of women! heaven is in thy soul,
Beauty and virtue shine forever round thee,
Bright'ning each other! thou art all divine!”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act III, scene ii.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Women, Beauty, Art, Soul

“Dada is the signboard of abstraction; advertising and business are also elements of poetry... I destroy the drawers of the brain and of social organization: spread demoralization wherever I go and cast my hand from heaven to hell, my eyes from hell to heaven, restore the fecund wheel of a universal circus to objective forces and the imagination of every individual.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918

Imagination, Hell, Business, Universe

“Kings will shudder [that] day,
Woe awaits them!
When the recompenser shall appear,
Let the heaven appear below.
A ruddy wind will be brought
Out to the cinder,
Until the world is as desolate
As when created.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), Oh God, the God of Formation

World, Appearance

“A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.”

G. K. Chesterton book William Blake

"William Blake" (1920)

“If I were a young man
With my bones full of marrow,
Oh, if I were a bold young man
Straight as an arrow,
I'd store up no virtue
For Heaven's distant plain,
I'd live at ease as I did please
And sin once again.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Brittle Bones".
Country Sentiment (1920)

Distant

“In heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then, would he add another verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here?”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

“You may rejoice to think yourselves secure,
You may be grateful for the gift divine,
That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure
And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine.
But is it sweet to look around and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserve at least as much as you,
Their faults not greater nor their virtues less?”

Anne Brontë book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), A Word to the Calvinists (1843)

Happiness, Soul, Thinking, Heart

“On whistling stormcloud; on Zephyrus wing,
The Spirit-choir loud the world-anthems sing;
Hark! List to their voice: "We have passed through death's door,
There's no Death; rejoice! life lives evermore."

We are, have always been, will ever be.
We are a portion of Eternity,
Older than Creation, a part of One Great Whole,
Is each Individual and immortal Soul.

On Time's whirring loom our garments we've wrought,
Eternally weave we on network of Thought,
Our kin and our country, by Mind brought to birth,
Were patterned in heaven ere molded on earth.

We have shone in the jewel and danced on the wave,
We have sparkled in fire, defying the grave;
Through shapes ever-changing, in size, kind and name
Our individual essence still is the same.

And when we have reached to the highest of all,
The gradations of growth our minds shall recall,
So that link by link we may join them together
And trace step by step the way we reached thither.

Thus in time we shall know, if only we do
What lifts, ennobles, is right and true.
With kindness to all, with malice to none,
That in and through us God's will may be done.”

Max Heindel (1865–1919) American asrologer and occultist

We Are Eternal (1911) Source: http://www.rosicrucian.com/rms/rmseng01.htm http://www.rosicrucian.com/rms/rmseng01.htm

Life, Death, God, World

“Suddenly I saw the red blood trickle down from under the Garland hot and freshly and right plenteously, as it were in the time of His Passion when the Garland of thorns was pressed on His blessed head who was both God and Man, the same that suffered thus for me. I conceived truly and mightily that it was Himself shewed it me, without any mean.
And in the same Shewing suddenly the Trinity fulfilled my heart most of joy. And so I understood it shall be in heaven without end to all that shall come there. For the Trinity is God: God is the Trinity; the Trinity is our Maker and Keeper, the Trinity is our everlasting love and everlasting joy and bliss, by our Lord Jesus Christ. And this was shewed in the First and in all: for where Jesus appeareth, the blessed Trinity is understood, as to my sight.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The First Revelation, Chapter 4

Love, God, Suffering, Passion

“I will give you more and stronger ones. But if you still persist in refusing to listen to reason and decline to do my bidding, and if you wish deliberately to rush to your ruin, then I will shortly, in your presence, order your Castle to be stormed. (Here he pointed with one hand towards Fort Provintia.) My smart boys will attack it, conquer it, and demolish it in such a way, that not one stone will remain standing. If I wish to set my forces to work, then I am able to move Heaven and Earth; wherever I go, I am destined to win. Therefore take warning, and think the matter well over.”

Koxinga (1624–1662) Chinese military leader

Formosa under the Dutch: described from contemporary records, with explanatory notes and a bibliography of the island, 1903, William Campbell, Kegan Paul, 424, Dec. 20 2011 http://books.google.com/books?id=OpdMq-YJoeoC&pg=PA423&dq=koxinga+formosa+always+belonged+to+china&hl=en&ei=vsjiTergDM3TgAekqbzKBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=same%20doom%20had%20they%20not%20taken%20to%20flight%20and%20gone%20out%20to%20sea.&f=false, Original from the University of Michigan(LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO MDCCCCIII Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty)

Way, Boy, Thinking

“There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards. p. 327.
1890s and attributed from posthumous publications

Hell

“Heroes have filled the zodiac of beneficent labors, and then given up their mortal part to the fire without a murmur. Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. Poets and priests have strung the lyre with heart-strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar which, reare'd anew from age to age, shall at last sustain the flame which rises to highest heaven. What shall we say of those who, if not so directly, or so consciously, in connection with the central truth, yet, led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less to develop and interpret the open secret of love passing into life, the divine energy creating for the purpose of happiness; — of the artist, whose hand, drawn by a preexistent harmony to a certain medium, moulds it to expressions of life more highly and completely organized than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those who are not yet sufficiently matured to divine it; of the philosopher, who listens steadily for causes, and, from those obvious, infers those yet unknown; of the historian, who, in faith that all events must have their reason and their aim, records them, and lays up archives from which the youth of prophets may be fed. The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose·”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Love, Life, Happiness, Pleasure

“Thus Christ is our Way, us surely leading in His laws, and Christ in His body mightily beareth us up into heaven.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 55

Law, Way, Christ

“For Heaven's sake, send help! There's a man trying to get into my room and the door's locked!”

Donald McGill (1875–1962) British artist

The Independent, September 8, 2006. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1372035.ece.

Help

“How important are the responsibilities, which now devolve upon me I fully realise, and it is my intention to prove by performance rather than by words. The inhertitance to which I succeed is no ordinary one, and I appreciate what Mysore owes to the administration of wise statesmen, and the care of British Government under the regency of my revered mother…. may heaven grant me the ability as well the ambition to make a full and wise use of the great opportunities of my position, and to govern, without fear or favour for the lasting happiness of my people.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

In his speech on being installed as the Maharaja of Mysroe at the age of 18Quoted in [Vikram Sampath, SPLENDOURS OF ROYAL MYSORE (PB), http://books.google.com/books?id=3aFmtr4MdLQC&pg=PT492, Rupa & Company, 978-81-291-1535-5, 492–]

Happiness, People, Fear

“The faculty of moral will, developed in the child, is a new element of his nature. It is a new power brought upon the scene, and a ruling power, delegated from Heaven. Never was a human being sunk so low that he had not, by God's gift, the power to rise. Because God commands him to rise. it is certain that he ran rise. Every man has the power, and should use it, to make all situations, trials, and temptations instruments to promote his virtue and happiness; and is so far from being the creature of circumstances, 'that he creates and controls them, making them to be all that they are, of evil or of good, to him as a moral being.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Grand Master Architect, p. 192

God, Happiness, Nature, Evil

“Christian doctors reproach the old learned rabbis, for their vain faith, and carnal desire of a glorious, temporal, outward Christ, who should set up their temple-worship all over the world. Vanity indeed, and learned blindness enough?
But nevertheless, in these condemners of rabbinic blindness, St. Paul's words are remarkably verified, viz., "Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest dost the same thing." For, take away all that from Christ which Christian doctors call enthusiasm, suppose him not to be an inward birth, a new life and Spirit within us, but only an outward, separate, distant heavenly prince, no more really in us, than our high cathedrals are in the third heavens, but only by an invisible hand from his throne on high, some way or other raising and helping great scholars, or great temporal powers, to make a rock in every nation for his church to stand upon; suppose all this (which is the very marrow of modern divinity) and then you have that very outward Christ, and that very outward kingdom, which the carnal Jew dreamed of, and for the sake of which the spiritual Christ was then nailed to the cross, and is still crucified by the new risen Jew in the Christian church.”

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

¶ 159 - 160.
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761)

Life, World, Faith, Dreams

“He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance. Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used it…. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 11: "God"

Evil, Chance, Success

“The heath was victorious, keeping off on all sides.
The common people were charmed,
During time proceeding of the men.
The oak, quickly moving,
Before him, tremble heaven and earth.
A valiant door-keeper against an enemy,
his name is considered.
The blue-bells combined,
And caused a consternation.
In rejecting, were rejected,
Others, that were perforated”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Battle of the Trees

Men, People, Time, Victory

“The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver--what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe--
Just a little white with the dust.”

Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918) English poet

On Receiving News of the War (1914), Break of Day in the Trenches (1916)

Life, Pleasure, Sleep, Strong

“To one who has been long in city pent,
’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

" Sonnet. To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent http://www.bartleby.com/126/23.html" Poems (1817)

“One who offers (suggests) what he doesn't know, will be under the curse of the angels of the heavens and the earth.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.2, p. 116.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, Religious

Angels

“When I see young people such as those of our day, I think that Heaven wishes to destroy the world.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

People, World, Thinking

“Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 48, st. 1.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Soul, Strong

“The youth, who pants to gain the amorous prize,
Forgets that Heaven with all-discerning eyes
Surveys the secret heart; and when desire
Has, in possession, quenched its short-lived fire,
The devious winds aside each promise bear,
And scatter all his solemn vows in air!”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

L'amante, per aver quel che desia,
Senza guardar che Dio tutto ode e vede,
Aviluppa promesse e giuramenti,
Che tutti spargon poi per l'aria i venti.
Canto X, stanza 5 (tr. John Hoole)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Secret, Youth, Heart, Forgetting

“How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures; nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

Thalaba the Destroyer http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/thalaba_frag.html, Bk. I, st. 1 (1800).

Beauty, Night

“Give me, kind Heaven, a private station,
A mind serene for contemplation:
Title and profit I resign;
The post of honour shall be mine.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

The Vulture, the Sparrow, and other Birds. Comparable to: "When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is a private station", Joseph Addison, Cato, Act iv, scene 4
Fables (1727), Fables, Part the Second (1738)

“And this is that Homer's golden chain, which reacheth down from heaven to earth, by which every creature is annexed, and depends on his Creator.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 1, member 2, subsection 1.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

Dependency

“I bear witness that Thou art the Most Manifest, the Omnipotent, the Ever-Abiding; that of all things that exist on earth and in the heavens nothing whatsoever can frustrate Thy purpose and that Thou art the Knower of all things and the Lord of might and majesty.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to ‘Him Who Will Be Made Manifest’

Art

“And in the morning when the sun rise.
Look in the water, see the blue sky.
As if heaven has been laid there at our feet.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Sausalito
Conor Oberst (2008)

Water, Sun

“There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven;”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

"Gossip in a Library"
In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays

Books

“"Muhammad of Arabia ascended the highest Heaven and returned. I swear by God that if I had reached that point, I should never have returned." These are the words of a great Muslim saint, 'AbdulQuddës of Gangoh. In the whole range of Sufi literature it will be probably difficult to find words which, in a single sentence, disclose such an acute perception of the psychological difference between the prophetic and the mystic types of consciousness. The mystic does not wish to return from the repose of "unitary experience"; and even when he does return, as he must, his return does not mean much for mankind at large.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam http://www.allamaiqbal.com/works/prose/english/reconstruction/index.htm

God, Literature

“It is not to come in any particular way, or with any particular experience, but to arise and come to your Father, and say unto Him, "Father I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son; make me as one of Thy hired servants."”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 151

Way

“To me, therefore, that Thracian Orpheus, that Theban, and that Methymnaean,--men, and yet unworthy of the name,--seem to have been deceivers, who, under the pretence of poetry corrupting human life, possessed by a spirit of artful sorcery for purposes of destruction, celebrating crimes in their orgies, and making human woes the materials of religious worship, were the first to entice men to idols; nay, to build up the stupidity of the nations with blocks of wood and stone,--that is, statues and images,--subjecting to the yoke of extremest bondage the truly noble freedom of those who lived as free citizens under heaven by their songs and incantations. But not such is my song, which has come to loose, and that speedily, the bitter bondage of tyrannizing demons; and leading us back to the mild and loving yoke of piety, recalls to heaven those that had been cast prostrate to the earth. It alone has tamed men, the most intractable of animals; the frivolous among them answering to the fowls of the air, deceivers to reptiles, the irascible to lions, the voluptuous to swine, the rapacious to wolves. The silly are stocks and stones, and still more senseless than stones is a man who is steeped in ignorance. As our witness, let us adduce the voice of prophecy accordant with truth, and bewailing those who are crushed in ignorance and folly: "For God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham;" and He, commiserating their great ignorance and hardness of heart who are petrified against the truth, has raised up a seed of piety, sensitive to virtue, of those stones--of the nations, that is, who trusted in stones. Again, therefore, some venomous and false hypocrites, who plotted against righteousness, he once called "a brood of vipers."”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

But if one of those serpents even is willing to repent, and follows the Word, he becomes a man of God.
Exhortation to the Heathen

Love, Life, Men, God

“About the hill lay other islands small,
Where other rocks, crags, cliffs, and mountains stood,
The Isles Fortunate these elder time did call,
To which high Heaven they reigned so kind and good,
And of his blessings rich so liberal,
That without tillage earth gives corn for food,
And grapes that swell with sweet and precious wine
There without pruning yields the fertile vine.The olive fat there ever buds and flowers,
The honey-drops from hollow oaks distil,
The falling brook her silver streams downpours
With gentle murmur from their native hill,
The western blast tempereth with dews and showers
The sunny rays, lest heat the blossoms kill,
The fields Elysian, as fond heathen sain,
Were there, where souls of men in bliss remain.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Ecco altre isole insieme, altre pendíci
Scoprian alfin men erte ed elevate.
Ed eran queste l'isole felici;
Così le nominò la prisca etate,
A cui tanto stimava i Cieli amici,
Che credea volontarie, e non arate
Quì partorir le terre, e in più graditi
Frutti, non culte, germogliar le viti.Quì non fallaci mai fiorir gli olivi,
E 'l mel dicea stillar dall'elci cave:
E scender giù da lor montagne i rivi
Con acque dolci, e mormorio soave:
E zefiri e rugiade i raggj estivi
Temprarvi sì, che nullo ardor v'è grave:
E quì gli Elisj campi, e le famose
Stanze delle beate anime pose.
Canto XV, stanzas 35–36 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Men, Food, Soul, Mountain

“Death cannot come
To him untimely who is fit to die;
The less of this cold world, the more of heaven;
The briefer life, the earlier immortality.”

Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868) English historian and churchman

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 180.

Life, Death, World

“Liberty … is one of the most valuable blessings that Heaven has bestowed upon mankind.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 58.

“The longing that God has placed in our hearts is for heaven, a better place, a better country.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 31

God, Heart, Country

“Our courteous Lord willeth that we should be as homely with Him as heart may think or soul may desire. But beware that we take not so recklessly this homeliness as to leave courtesy. For our Lord Himself is sovereign homeliness, and as homely as He is, so courteous He is: for He is very courteous. And the blessed creatures that shall be in heaven with Him without end, He will have them like to Himself in all things. And to be like our Lord perfectly, it is our very salvation and our full bliss.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 77

Home, Soul, Thinking, Heart

“Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun. The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhiratha, a charioteer. And named Karna.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti in p. 232.
The God of Small Things

Love, God, Secret, Youth

“Islam considers Ethics & Morals as a way to attain rewards and entitlement to Heavens.”

Mohammed Alkobaisi (1970) Iraqi Islamic scholar

Understanding Islam, "Morals and Ethics" http://vod.dmi.ae/media/96716/Ep_03_Morals_and_Ethics Dubai Media

Way

“Hey, you!
Heaven!
Off with your hat!
I am coming!

Not a sound.

The universe sleeps,
its huge paw curled
upon a star-infested ear.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

Page 109.
The Cloud in Trousers (1915)

Star, Sleep, Universe

“Dying visions of angels and Christ and God and heaven are confined to credibly good men. Why do not bad men have such visions? They die of all sorts of diseases; they have nervous temperaments; they even have creeds and hopes about the future which they cling to with very great tenacity; why do not they rejoice in some such glorious illusions when they go out of the world?”

Enoch Fitch Burr (1818–1907) American astronomer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 182.

Men, God, World, Disease

“Mathematics is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to Human Affairs. In which last Respect, we may be said to receive from the Mathematics, the principal Delights of Life, Securities of Health, Increase of Fortune, and Conveniences of Labour: That we dwell elegantly and commodiously, build decent Houses for ourselves, erect stately Temples to God, and leave wonderful Monuments to Posterity: That we are protected by those Rampires from the Incursions of the Enemy; rightly use Arms, skillfully range an Army, and manage War by Art, and not by the Madness of wild Beasts: That we have safe Traffick through the deceitful Billows, pass in a direct Road through the tractless Ways of the Sea, and come to the designed Ports by the uncertain Impulse of the Winds: That we rightly cast up our Accounts, do Business expeditiously, dispose, tabulate, and calculate scattered 248 Ranks of Numbers, and easily compute them, though expressive of huge Heaps of Sand, nay immense Hills of Atoms: That we make pacifick Separations of the Bounds of Lands, examine the Moments of Weights in an equal Balance, and distribute every one his own by a just Measure: That with a light Touch we thrust forward vast Bodies which way we will, and stop a huge Resistance with a very small Force: That we accurately delineate the Face of this Earthly Orb, and subject the Oeconomy of the Universe to our Sight: That we aptly digest the flowing Series of Time, distinguish what is acted by due Intervals, rightly account and discern the various Returns of the Seasons, the stated Periods of Years and Months, the alternate Increments of Days and Nights, the doubtful Limits of Light and Shadow, and the exact Differences of Hours and Minutes: That we derive the subtle Virtue of the Solar Rays to our Uses, infinitely extend the Sphere of Sight, enlarge the near Appearances of Things, bring to Hand Things remote, discover Things hidden, search Nature out of her Concealments, and unfold her dark Mysteries: That we delight our Eyes with beautiful Images, cunningly imitate the Devices and portray the Works of Nature; imitate did I say? nay excel, while we form to ourselves Things not in being, exhibit Things absent, and represent Things past: That we recreate our Minds and delight our Ears with melodious Sounds, attemperate the inconstant Undulations of the Air to musical Tunes, add a pleasant Voice to a sapless Log and draw a sweet Eloquence from a rigid Metal; celebrate our Maker with an harmonious Praise, and not unaptly imitate the blessed Choirs of Heaven: That we approach and examine the inaccessible Seats of the Clouds, the distant Tracts of Land, unfrequented Paths of the Sea; lofty Tops of the Mountains, low Bottoms of the Valleys, and deep Gulphs of the Ocean: That in Heart we advance to the Saints themselves above, yea draw them to us, scale the etherial Towers, freely range through the celestial Fields, measure the Magnitudes, and determine the Interstices of the Stars, prescribe inviolable Laws to the Heavens themselves, and confine the wandering Circuits of the Stars within fixed Bounds: Lastly, that we comprehend the vast Fabrick of the Universe, admire and contemplate the wonderful Beauty of the Divine 249 Workmanship, and to learn the incredible Force and Sagacity of our own Minds, by certain Experiments, and to acknowledge the Blessings of Heaven with pious Affection.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 27-30

Life, God, War, Health

“A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his own property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler http://books.google.pt/books?id=zltaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+lawyer's+dream+of+heaven:%22&dq=%22A+lawyer's+dream+of+heaven:%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=_LPRUvmtGa_b7AbdjoCADQ&ved=0CFgQ6AEwBjgK, compiled and edited by ‎A.T. Bartholomew (1934), p. 27

Dreams

“The Prophet said, "Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah's cause). The Prophet said, "A single endeavor (of fighting) in Allah's cause in the afternoon or in the forenoon is better than all the world and whatever is in it. A place in Paradise as small as the bow or lash of one of you is better than all the world and whatever is in it. And if a houri from Paradise appeared to the people of the earth, she would fill the space between Heaven and the Earth with light and pleasant scent and her head cover is better than the world and whatever is in it."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated Anas bin Malik, in Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 53
Sunni Hadith

People, World, Light, Appearance

“Seek for a fresh invoice of grace. Unbelief can scoff or growl; faith is the nightingale that sings in the darkest hour. Faith can draw honey out of the rock and oil out of the flint. With Christ in possession and heaven in reversion, it marches to the time of the One-hundred-and-third Psalm over the roughest road, and against the most cutting blast.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 236.

Faith, Singing, Time, Christ

“To no one but the Son of Heaven does it belong to order ceremonies, to fix the measures, and to determine the written characters.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

“Baby - thought I'd died and gone to heaven;
Such a night I never had before.
Thought I'd died and gone to heaven,
Cause what I got there ain't no cure for.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

Thought I'd Died and Gone to Heaven
Song lyrics, Waking Up the Neighbours (1991)

Baby, Night

“The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this — with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need — this life is hell.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

To His Newborn Great-Grandson, address on his ninetieth birthday (1958)

Life, World, Hell

“Hello, Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House. And this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. For every American this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And for people all over the world I am sure they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what a feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one.”

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

Telephone message from the Oval office to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. (20 July 1969)
1960s

People, World, Peace, History

“I sing the goodly armes, and that Chieftaine
Who great Sepulchre of our Lord did free.
Much with his hande, much wrought he with his braine;
Much in that glorious conquest suffred hee:
And hell in vaine hitselfe opposde, in vaine
The mixed troopes Asian and Libick flee
To armes, for Heaven him favour'd, and he drew
To sacred ensignes his straid mates anew.”

Richard Carew (antiquary) (1555–1620) English scholar

Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Hierusalem. An Heroicall poeme written in Italian by Seig. Torquato Tasso, and translated into English by R. C. [Richard Carew] Esquire: and now the first part containing five cantos imprinted in both languages, &c. (1594), opening stanza
Compare Edward Fairfax's translation (1600): "The sacred armies, and the godly knight, / That the great sepulchre of Christ did free, / I sing;" altered by Atterbury thus: "I sing the war made in the Holy Land, / And the great Chief that Christ's great tomb did free."

Hell, Singing

“And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"The Presence of Love" (1807), lines 10-11

Love

“Islam chose to unite earth and heaven in a single system, present both in the heart of the individual and the actuality of society, recognizing no separation of practical exertion from religious impulse. … The center of its being and the field of its action is human life in its entirety, spiritual and material, religious and worldly. Such a religion cannot continue to exist in isolation from society, nor can its adherents be true Muslims unless they practice their faith in their social, legal and economic relationships.”

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and politician

Source: Social Justice in Islam (1953), p. 26

Life, Faith, Religion, Heart

“O to be a dragon,
a symbol of the power of Heaven — of silkworm
size or immense; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon!”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

"O To Be A Dragon" in O To Be A Dragon (1957)
Poetry

Time

“Heaven began to run at the edges.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

"Hitler Painted Roses" (1977)

“"Milton was right," said my Teacher. "The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words 'Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.' There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery."”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Great Divorce

Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 9

Soul, Hell, Teachers

“And look upon you with ten thousand eyes
Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world were done.”

Joshua Sylvester (1563–1618) English poet

Poem: Love's Omnipresence http://www.bartleby.com/106/25.html

World

“It is known that afore miracles come sorrow and anguish and tribulation; and that is for that we should know our own feebleness and our mischiefs that we are fallen in by sin, to meeken us and make us to dread God and cry for help and grace. Miracles come after that, and they come of the high Might, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, shewing His virtue and the joys of Heaven so far at it may be in this passing life: and that to strengthen our faith and to increase our hope, in charity. Wherefore it pleaseth Him to be known and worshipped in miracles. Then signifieth He thus: He willeth that we be not borne over low for sorrow and tempests that fall to us: for it hath ever so been afore miracle-coming.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 36

Life, Wisdom, God, Faith

“That these ideas will ultimately triumph, I have no doubt. Nor is it open to question that by the combined efforts of the peace-loving peoples they can be made to triumph now, before Europe has been again plunged into a fresh bloodbath.
May Heaven grant that the statesmen of the world may realize this before it is too late and, by the exertion of the needed courage and prudence, restore again to the position of authority which it had only a few years ago, that great institution for the maintenance of peace on which the future of civilization so largely depends. I mean, of course, the League of Nations.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)

Love, People, World, Peace

“The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I
Abjure my so much loved variety.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 17, Variety, line 1
Elegies

Love

“(Doctor in bed) I dreamt I died and went to Heaven and they handed me some old Ms. magazines, a paper sheet, and made me sit in a little room with a bunch of other doctors.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 106

“… one morning, when it was barely light, I woke up because of a golden light that filled the whole wall above my bed, and I saw something like a picture of the Holy Virgin, surrounded by several other personages … and several angels, some of whom were as big as she, while others were like little children. It was like a tableau, and yet the Holy Virgin was alive, in heaven, and the angels were changing position. I believe this lasted for a very long time. I looked, as if praying without words, and I was struck with amazement; I had never seen anything so beautiful. At the beginning, all of the light was like very vibrant gold; it faded little by little, and, as it faded, the face and the hands of the Holy Virgin became more alive and clearer. I was not frightened in the least but filled with a new joy that was both intense and very sweet.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

The vision of Mary, p. 166
My Early Years (1968)

Children, Beauty, Angels, Light

“O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
To temper man: we had been brutes without you.
Angels are painted fair, to look like you:
There ’s in you all that we believe of heaven,—
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love.”

Thomas Otway Venice Preserv'd

Venice Preserv'd (1682), Act i. Sc. 1.

Love, Truth, Angels, Nature

“Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army, establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy. May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel through which it may pour its favors. While you are exterminating the monster aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of its associate, monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our new Constitution, not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eye. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords and commons come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed up by a tribe of agitators which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers have come into our legislature, or rather too many of our legislature have become stock-jobbers and king-jobbers. However, the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette (16 June 1792)
1790s

Happiness, People, Country

“Every part of the earth's surface presents unequivocal proofs that the elevation of the bed of the ocean in some places, and the subsidence of the dry land in others, have been, and are still, going on; and that, in truth, the continual changes in the relative position of the land and water, are the effects of laws which the Divine Author of the Universe has impressed on matter, and thus rendered it capable of perpetual renovation:—
Art, Empire, Earth itself, to change are doomed;
Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vail,
And gulf's the mountain's mighty mass entombed,
And where the Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloomed.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Thoughts on a Pebble, or, A First Lesson in Geology (1849)

Truth, Law, Art, Mountain

“My understanding was lifted up into Heaven, and there I saw three heavens: of which sight I marvelled greatly. And though I see three heavens — and all in the blessed manhood of Christ — none is more, none is less, none is higher, none is lower, but even-like in bliss.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22

Understanding, Christ

“So I really don't care about anything he [God] has got to say, and if he came down from heaven right now, in a big pair of hobnail boots, waving the book of Judges in my face, I'd simply tell him what I tell every other evangelising prick I meet: "No thanks. I'm not interested in your phony salvation. I'd prefer damnation. Now piss off, I've got some sinning to do."”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"God the psycho" (2 February 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=G5JtxrR6msg 2008

God, Books

“Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley To a Skylark

St. 1
To a Skylark (1821)

Art, Bird, Heart

“He came, and no man knew it; no man knew
The wondrous boon to Scotland given;
That there—beneath that grim and wintry blue—
A glorious Poet, strong and true,
Had newly dropp'd from heaven!”

John Stanyan Bigg (1828–1865) British writer

Ode to the Centenary of Burns http://www.gerald-massey.org.uk/massey/dmc_burns_centenary2.htm#7 (1858)

Strong

“Can Hell and Heaven be merely the difference between ignorance and knowledge?”

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 16 (p. 158)

Hell, Knowledge

“In relations with others, one should express resentment and anger openly and straightforwardly. If one cannot express them openly and straightforwardly, the only thing to do is forget about them. To harbor grievances in one's heart, awaiting some later opportunity to give vent to them, is to act like a weak and petty man-in truth, it can only be called cowardice. The mind of the superior man is like Heaven. When it is resentful or angry, it thunders forth its indignation. But once having loosed its feelings, it is like a sunny day with a clear sky: within the heart there remains not the trace of a cloud. Such is the beauty of true manliness.”

Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859) Japanese politician

Vol. III.
Yoshida Shoin Zenshu

Truth, Beauty, Feeling, Heart

“But many a crime deem'd innocent on earth
Is register'd in Heaven; and these no doubt
Have each their record, with a curse annex'd.
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
But God will never.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 439.

God, Heart

“Whoever can feel, the love I do tell,
Would take by the heel, poor sinners from hell;
As downward they're going, to bring them above;
To sing of Christ's dying, a Heaven of love.”

Dorothy Ripley (1767–1832) missionary

A Hymn From My Nativity (22 August 1819), p. 18
The Bank of Faith and Works United (1819)

Love, Feeling, Hell, Singing

“It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr. John, back to "plasters, pills, and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry.”

John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) Scottish writer and editor

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, August 1818, p. 524.
Reviewing Endymion.

Box

“What tranquillity will there be in heaven! Who can express the fullness and blessedness of this peace! What a calm is this! How sweet and holy and joyous! What a haven of rest to enter, after having passed through the storms and tempests of this world, in which pride and selfishness and envy and malice and scorn and contempt and contention and vice are as waves of a restless ocean, always rolling, and often dashed about in violence and fury! What a Canaan of rest to come to, after going through this waste and howling wilderness, full of snares and pitfalls and poisonous serpents, where no rest could be found.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 302.

World, Peace, Envy, Selfishness

“Twelve thousand in the convention
Believed through the voice of John.
They worship, they deserve a portion,
In heaven they will not be angry.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Elegy of the Thousand Sons

“Book-learning scarcely tells me
Of severe afflictions after death-bed;
And such as have heard my bardic books
They shall obtain the region of heaven, the best of all abodes.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The First Address of Taliesin

Death, Books, Affliction, Learning

“DK: How often does the seriousness end and the irony begin in your work?
M: Many times. I have a grand and endless capacity to find myself slightly ridiculous. I'm not pretending to be some wallowing prophet, for heaven's sake. I think we all have to sit down and look in the mirror and think, What is that absurd monstrosity?”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from "Homme alone 2" by David Keeps, Details (December 1992)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Thinking, Time

“The movement has indeed been slow, and not such as man would have expected; but it has been analogous to the great movements of God in His providence and in His works. So, if we may credit the geologists, has this earth reached its present state. So have moved on the great empires. So retribution follows crime. So rise the tides. So grows the tree with long intervals of repose and apparent death. So comes on the spring, with battling elements and frequent reverses, with snowbanks and violets, and, if we had no experience, we might be doubtful what the end would be. But we know that back of all this, beyond these fluctuations, away in the serene heavens, the sun is moving steadily on; that these very agitations of the elements and seeming reverses, are not only the sign, but the result of his approach, and that the full warmth and radiance of the summer noontide are sure to come. So, O Divine Redeemer, Sun of Righteousness, come Thou! So will He come. It may be through clouds and darkness and tempest; but the heaven where He is, is serene; He is "traveling in the greatness of His strength; "and as surely as the throne of God abides, we know He shall yet reach the height and splendor of the highest noon, and that the light of millennial glory shall yet flood the earth.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 418.

Death, God, Travel, Spring

“"Thank Heaven who gave us the woman!"
(concert in Florence, june 2005)”

Vasco Rossi (1980) Italian singer-songwriter

Siamo solo noi (1981)

“To our unhappy sex genius and sensibility are the most treacherous gifts of Heaven. Why should we cultivate talents merely to gratify the caprice of tyrants? Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show us the narrow limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison.”

Maria Edgeworth book Leonora

Leonora (1806), Letter 1; Tales and Novels, vol. 13, p. 5.

Sex, Knowledge, Light

“The moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but, rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says: "The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite, Nor yet doth linger."”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (29 October 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 275.
1850s

Men, Law, Penalty

“Heaven is where God dwells. It is a specific place; …a place of unparalleled tranquility and beauty. It includes the new heaven and new earth.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 19

God, Beauty

“No man loves God who hates his kind,
Who tramples on his brother's heart and soul;
Who seeks to shackle, cloud, or fog the mind
By fears of hell has not perceived our goal.

God-sent are all religions blest;
And Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life,
To give the heavy laden rest
And peace from sorrow, sin, and strife.

Behold the Universal Spirit came
To all the churches, not to one alone;
On Pentecostal morn a tongue of flame
Round each apostle as a halo shone.

Since then, as vultures ravenous with greed,
We oft have battled for an empty name,
And sought by dogma, edict, cult, or creed,
To send each other to the quenchless flame.

Is Christ then twain? Was Cephas, Paul,
To save the world, nailed to the tree?
Then why divisions here at all?
Christ's love enfolds both you and me.

His pure sweet love is not confined
By creed which segregate and raise a wall.
His love enfolds, embraces human kind,
No matter what ourselves or Him we call.

Then why not take Him at His word?
Why hold to creeds which tear apart?
But one thing matters, be it heard
That brother love fill every heart.

There's but one thing the world has need to know.
There's but one balm for all our human woe:

There's but one way that leads to heaven above--
That way is human sympathy and love.”

Max Heindel (1865–1919) American asrologer and occultist

Creed or Christ (1909) Source: http://www.rosicrucian.com/rcc/rcceng00.htm http://www.rosicrucian.com/rcc/rcceng00.htm

Love, Life, God, Hate

“I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro ministers were among other Negro leaders who felt they were being pulled into something that they had not helped to organize. This is almost always a problem. Negro community unity was the first requisite if our goals were to be realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while ignoring social conditions in his own community that cause men an earthly hell. I stressed that the Negro minister had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership, and I asked how the Negro would ever gain freedom without his minister's guidance, support and inspiration. These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support, and as a result, the role of the Negro church today, by and large, is a glorious example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history, within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end of such naked brutality and violence as we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians in the catacombs has God's house, as a symbol, weathered such attack as the Negro churches.
I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window. It was symbolic of how sin and evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I can remember thinking that if men were this bestial, was it all worth it? Was there any hope? Was there any way out?… time has healed the wounds -- and buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over 3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting -- ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor's police dogs, clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn back, he whirled and shouted to his men to turn on the hoses. It was one of the most fantastic events of the Birmingham story that these Negroes, many of them on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the Negroes stood up and advanced, and Connor's men fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past to hold their prayer meeting. I saw there, I felt there, for the first time, the pride and the power of nonviolence.
Another time I will never forget was one Saturday night, late, when my brother telephoned me in Atlanta from Birmingham -- that city which some call "Bombingham" -- which I had just left. He told me that a bomb had wrecked his home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force upon the motel room in which I had been staying, had injured several people. My brother described the terror in the streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, behind his voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Tears came into my eyes that at such a tragic moment, my race still could sing its hope and faith. Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html 1960s

Life, Men, God, People

“In comparing civilized man with the animal world, one is as the Alpine traveller, who sees the mountains soaring into the sky and can hardly discern where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks end, and where the clouds of heaven begin. Surely the awe-struck voyager may be excused if, at first, he refuses to believe the geologist, who tells him that these glorious masses are, after all, the hardened mud of primeval seas, or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces—of one substance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory. But the geologist is right; and due reflection on his teachings, instead of diminishing our reverence and our wonder, adds all the force of intellectual sublimity, to the mere aesthetic intuition of the uninstructed beholder.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 131-132

World, Travel, Mountain, Animals

“I have extolled Thine overpowering majesty through Thine Own Self before the dwellers of the heavens and the earth, bearing witness that, verily, Thou and Thou alone art the Lord of might, the Eternal One, the Ancient of Days.
Hallowed and glorified art Thou; there is none other God but Thee and in truth unto Thee do we all return.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to ‘Him Who Will Be Made Manifest’

God, Truth, Art

“All places are distant from heaven alike.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 4, Exercise rectified of Body and Mind.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II

Distant

“When panting sighs the bosom fill,
And hands by chance united thrill
At once with one delicious pain
The pulses and the nerves of twain;
When eyes that erst could meet with ease,
Do seek, yet, seeking, shyly shun
Ecstatic conscious unison,—
The sure beginnings, say, be these
Prelusive to the strain of love
Which angels sing in heaven above?”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Love and Reason http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/lovereason.html, st. 1 (1844).

Love, Pain, Angels, Singing

“How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you God of love, source of all love in heaven and on earth; you who spared nothing but in love gave everything; you who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in you.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

opening prayer, p. 3
1840s, Works of Love (1847)

Love, God

“Looking carefully, one discovers at last that this gorgeous combination of all the hues of Paradise contains or hides a Last Judgment [....]

To the Virgin and her suppliants, as to us, who though outcasts in other churches can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was not a symbol of God's justice or man's corruption but of her own infinite mercy. The Trinity judged, through Christ;— Christ loved and pardoned, through her. She wielded the last and highest power on earth and in hell. In the glow and beauty of her nature, the light of her Son's infinite love shone as the sunlight through the glass, turning the Last Judgement itself into the highest proof of her divine and supreme authority. The rudest ruffian of the middle-ages, when he looked at this Last Judgment, laughed, for what was the Last Judgment to her! An ornament, a play-thing, a pleasure! a jewelled decoration which she wore on her breast! Her chief joy was to pardon; her eternal instinct was to love; her deepest passion was pity! On her imperial heart the flames of hell showed only the opaline colors of heaven. Christ the Trinity might judge as much as he pleased, but Christ the Mother would rescue; and her servants could look boldly into the flames.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love, God, Pleasure, Age

“Valmiki stood up and broke free out of that hard anthill. Suddenly he saw all around him many houses of hermits and their families, young trees carefully watered, a retreat cleared from the forest. Four boys ran up to him from the river and cried "The wife of some great warrior weeps by Ganges. She is fair as a Goddess fallen from heaven, all bewildered, all alone, never seen before, with child, and with small gifts tied from the city within a silk cloth beside her. Go to her, welcome her and protect her.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

In p. 6.
Narada to Valmiki.
Ramayana

Family, Boy, Tree, Water

“Listen! what is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try and journey one’s road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner…
Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 5, "Our March into the Desert"

Life, Death, Way, Travel

“With all that’s been written about Temple of the Dog recently, it’s reminded me of the original meanings of those songs. Say Hello 2 Heaven, for example, was one of the songs I wrote directly for Andy Wood and the amount of times someone has requested I play that song for someone else who’s died have been numerous. That’s great that it’s become this anthem that makes somebody feel some comfort when they’ve lost someone, but recently I’ve become a little more possessive of the idea that this song was actually written for a specific guy and I haven’t forgotten that person. So I’ve been reminding myself and those in the audience where that song came from.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell Interview: ‘There’s always been a desire in me to keep the attention of a room full of people with just one stupid guitar and nothing else’, The Independent, 20 May 2016 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/chris-cornell-interview-there-s-always-been-a-desire-in-me-to-keep-the-attention-of-a-room-full-of-a7039831.html, Temple of the Dog Era

Dogs, Guy, Feeling, Idea