Quotes about heaven
page 17

Cat Stevens photo

“One is the ever kindling star
King of the immortal spark
In heaven’s eye”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Monad's Anthem
Song lyrics, Numbers (1974)

“Their fear deepened with the night as they beheld the face of the heavens turning and the mountains and all places rapt from view and all around thick darkness. The very stillness of Nature, the silent constellations in the heavens, the firmament starred with streaming meteors filled them with fear. And as a traveller by night overtaken in some unknown spot upon the road keeps ear and eye alert, while the darkening landscape to left and right and trees looming up with shadows strangely huge do but make heavier the terrors of night, even so the heroes quailed.”
Auxerat hora metus, iam se vertentis Olympi ut faciem raptosque simul montesque locosque ex oculis circumque graves videre tenebras. ipsa quies rerum mundique silentia terrent astraque et effusis stellatus crinibus aether; ac velut ignota captus regione viarum noctivagum qui carpit iter non aure quiescit, non oculis, noctisque metus niger auget utrimque campus et occurrens umbris maioribus arbor, haud aliter trepidare viri.

Auxerat hora metus, iam se vertentis Olympi
ut faciem raptosque simul montesque locosque
ex oculis circumque graves videre tenebras.
ipsa quies rerum mundique silentia terrent
astraque et effusis stellatus crinibus aether;
ac velut ignota captus regione viarum
noctivagum qui carpit iter non aure quiescit,
non oculis, noctisque metus niger auget utrimque
campus et occurrens umbris maioribus arbor,
haud aliter trepidare viri.
Source: Argonautica, Book II, Lines 38–47

Muhammad photo
Ramakrishna photo
Ella Wheeler Wilcox photo

“There is no sudden entrance into Heaven.
Slow is the ascent by the path of Love.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

The Way (1913).
Poetry quotes, New Thought Pastels (1913)

Adelaide Anne Procter photo

“Hours are golden links, God's token
Reaching heaven; but one by one
Take them, lest the chain be broken
Ere the pilgrimage be done.”

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 583.

Confucius photo

“The way of Heaven and Earth may be completely declared in one sentence: They are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable.”

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

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Oliver Cowdery photo
Edmund Sears photo

“Calm on the listening ear of night
Come Heaven’s melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.”

Edmund Sears (1810–1876) American minister

Christmas Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

David Hare photo

“Nothing is further than Earth from Heaven: nothing is nearer than Heaven to Earth.”

David Hare (1947) British writer

Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 563.
Misattributed

“How at heaven's gates she claps her wings,
The morne not waking til she sings.”

John Lyly (1554–1606) English politician

Cupid and Campaspe, Act v, Sc. 1. Compare: "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gat sings,/And Phœbus 'gins arise", William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act ii, sc. 3.

John Milton photo
Max Lucado photo

“You have a God who loves you, the power of love behind you, the Holy Spirit within you, and all of heaven ahead of you.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Travelling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear (2001)

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“After a considerable walk through the forest, where I became acquainted with several of the little lakes I am so fond of, I came to Hestehaven and Lake Carl. Here is one of the most beautiful regions I have ever seen. The countryside is somewhat isolated and slopes steeply down to the lake, but with the beech forests growing on either side, it is not barren. A growth of rushes forms the background and the lake itself the foreground; a fairly large part of the lake is clear, but a still larger part is overgrown with the large green leaves of the waterlily, under which the fish seemingly try to hide but now and then peek out and flounder about on the surface in order to bathe in sunshine. The land rises on the opposite side, a great beech forest, and in the morning light the lighted areas make a marvelous contrast to the shadowed areas. The church bells call to prayer, but not in a temple made by human hands. If the birds do not need to be reminded to praise God, then ought men not be moved to prayer outside of the church, in the true house of God, where heaven's arch forms the ceiling of the church, where the roar of the storm and the light breezes take the place of the organ's bass and treble, where the singing of the birds make up the congregational hymns of praise, where echo does not repeat the pastor's voice as in the arch of the stone church, but where everything resolves itself in an endless antiphony — Hillerød, July 25, 1835”

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

1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Brigham Young photo
Muhammad photo
Laurent Clerc photo

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

William Tyndale photo

“Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

William Tyndale (1494–1536) Bible translator and agitator from England

Matthew 6:9
Tyndale's translations

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F 84
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Graham Greene photo
Julian (emperor) photo
Barbara Bush photo
Menno Simons photo
Helen Garner photo
Mitt Romney photo

“It's not worth moving heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

[2007-04-26, AP Interview: Romney says he's not the only one switching positions, rivals do it too, Liz Sidoti, San Francisco Chronicle, http://web.archive.org/web/20070430053858/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/26/politics/p131443D20.DTL&type=politics, 2007-04-30, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/26/politics/p131443D20.DTL&type=politics]
regarding Osama bin Laden
2007 campaign for Republican nomination for United States President

Miguel de Unamuno photo
Henry Van Dyke photo
Isaiah Berlin photo

“The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)

Nicholas of Cusa photo
Jonathan Swift photo

“What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly: that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell photo
Camille Paglia photo
Gautama Buddha photo
Samuel Adams photo
Philo photo
Harry Chapin photo
Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney photo

“Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Make our pleasant earth below
Like the heaven above.”

"Little Things" (1845) as quoted in Our Woman Workers: Biographical Sketches of Women Eminent in the Universalist Church for Literary, Philanthropic and Christian Work (1881) by E. R. Hanson. These were the final words of the poem in the original publication, but later versions published anonymously by other authors appended various additions to this. It has also often appeared credited to Carney in a variant form:
Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Help to make earth happy
Like the heaven above.

James Anthony Froude photo

“We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring.
I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.”

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Sri Aurobindo photo

“The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the Spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course…. Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being…. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality for the kind…. Failures must be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant's endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando of the discoverer. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved. A true beginning has to be made; the rest is a work for Time in its sudden achievements or its long patient labour….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

July, 1918
India's Rebirth

“Heaven… is the eternal kingdom Christ will inaugurate at His second coming.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 27

Bismillah Khan photo
James K. Morrow photo
John Milton photo
Morgan Murphy (food critic) photo

“If there's no bacon in heaven, I don't plan on going.”

Morgan Murphy (food critic) (1972) Southern writer

Source: <i>Bourbon & Bacon</i> (2014), p. 180

Thomas Moore photo

“Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea
When heaven was all tranquillity.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Lalla Rookh http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/lallarookh/index.html (1817), Part IX: The Light of the Harem

John Muir photo
William Wordsworth photo

“Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven
This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavour,
And memory of earth's bitter leaven
Effaced forever.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Thoughts Suggested on the Banks of the Nith, st. 10.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

Catherine of Siena photo

“The path to heaven lies through heaven, and all the way to heaven is heaven.”

Catherine of Siena (1347–1380) Italian Dominican saint

Attributed by Dorothy Day in On Pilgrimage (1948) p. 161
Variants:
All the way to Heaven is Heaven, because Christ is the Way.
As attributed in The Last Things : Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven (1998) by Regis Martin, p. 39
All the way to heaven is heaven, for Jesus said, I am the way.
As attributed in The Fear of Beggars : Stewardship and Poverty in Christian Ethics (2007) by Kelly S. Johnson, p. 209

Russell Brand photo
John C. Wright photo
Jean de La Bruyère photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“No free government under Heaven, with a well disciplined militia was ever yet subdued by mercenary troups.”

Antifederalist Papers http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?subcategory=73 John DeWitt IV http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1649 (1787)
Attributed

Joseph Rodman Drake photo
Charles Henry Fowler photo
Nathaniel Parker Willis photo

“The sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven
By man is cursed alway.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867) American magazine writer, editor, and publisher

Unseen Spirits.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

Joseph Smith, Jr. photo
Luís de Camões photo

“How sweet is praise, and justly purchased glory,
By one's own actions, when to Heaven they soar!
Each nobler soul will strain, to have his story,
Match, if not darken, all that went before.
Envy of other's fame, not transitory,
Screws up illustrious actions more, and more.
Such, as contend in honorable deeds,
The spur of high applause incites their speeds.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Quão doce é o louvor e a justa glória
Dos próprios feitos, quando são soados!
Qualquer nobre trabalha que em memória
Vença ou iguale os grandes já passados.
As invejas da ilustre e alheia história
Fazem mil vezes feitos sublimados.
Quem valerosas obras exercita,
Louvor alheio muito o esperta e incita.
Stanza 92 (tr. Richard Fanshawe)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto V

John Hagee photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Emanuel Swedenborg photo
Samuel Rutherford photo

“It is certain that this is not only good which the Almighty has done, but that it is best; He hath reckoned all your steps to heaven.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 276.

John the Evangelist photo
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley photo

“I doubt not but the fire illuminating heaven on Michelmas eve was seen there – such as I never saw for the time more fearful. God sendeth us such signs but for our erudition.”

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598) English statesman

Letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, c. 1573-76.
Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960), p. 155.

Joseph H. Hertz photo
Abraham Joshua Heschel photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo

“And now we beseech of Thee that we may have every day some such sense of God's mercy and of the power of God about us, as we have of the fullness of the light of heaven before us.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 273

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot photo

“He seized the lightning from Heaven and the scepter from the Tyrants.”
Eripuit Coelo fulmen, mox Sceptra Tyrannis.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) French economist

Statement in Latin about Benjamin Franklin, as quoted in The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review, Vol. X (March 1811) http://books.google.com/books?id=Q-ERAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA167&dq=%22Eripuit+Coelo+fulmen+sceptrumque+tyrannis%22&ei=YyJvScTUG5HKMuCSgMwM. This has also been quoted in several other variants of Latin or French expression, and been translated into English in various ways. Though it has probably incorrectly been cited as a remark of 1775, the earliest published reference to it appears to have occurred in April 1778.
Variants:
Eripuit fulmen coelo, mox sceptra tyrannis.
Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis.
He snatched lightning from the heavens and the scepter from the tyrants.
He snatched lightning from the sky and scepters from tyrants.

George Bernard Shaw photo
Henry Fielding photo

“Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

Book III, Ch. 10
The History of Tom Jones (1749)

Christopher Hitchens photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Daniel Tosh photo

“I hope God speaks English. If I get up to heaven and have to point at a menu, I'm gonna be pissed.”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

True Stories I Made Up (2005)

Joseph N. Welch photo
Lupe Fiasco photo

“A match made in Heaven, set the fires in Hell”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

Albums, Lupe Fiasco's The Cool (2007)

Amir Khusrow photo

“During the attack, the catapults were busily plied on both sides… ‘Praise be to God for his exaltation of the religion of Muhammad. It is not to be doubted that stones are worshipped by Gabrs,74 but as the stones did no service to them, they only bore to heaven the futility of that worship, and at the same time prostrated their devotees upon earth’…”

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

About Sultan ‘Alau’d-Din Khalji (AD 1296-1316) and his generals conquests in Warangal (Andhra Pradesh) Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians,Vol. III, p. 81-85
Khazainu’l-Futuh

Dogen photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Thomas Brooks photo
Pope Pius X photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“He who steadily observes the moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to William Canby (18 September 1813)
1810s

50 Cent photo

“I've got to make it to heaven; for going through hell.”

50 Cent (1975) American rapper, actor, businessman, investor and television producer

Gotta Make it to Heaven
Song lyrics, Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003)

Torquato Tasso photo

“With fortunate misfortune, kindly wrath,
Heaven's light lash now punishes your black
and foolish sin, and makes of your soul's weal
yourself the minister.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Seconda avversità, pietoso sdegno
Con leve sferza di lassù flagella
Tua folle colpa; e fa di tua salute
Te medesmo ministro.
Canto XII, stanza 87 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Valerie Jarrett photo

“Michelle was so mature beyond her years, so thoughtful and perceptive. She really prodded me about what the job would be like because she had lots of choices. I offered it to her on the spot, which was totally inappropriate because I should have talked to the mayor first. But I just knew she was really special.
Barack never grills. That's part of what is so effective about him: He puts you completely at ease, and the next thing you know he's asking more and more probing questions and gets you to open up and reflect a little bit. That night we talked about his childhood compared to my childhood and realized we both had rather…unusual childhoods.
Married in 1983, separated in 1987, and divorced in 1988. Enough said. He was a physician. He passed away. I want to say in about 1991.
We grew up together. We were friends since childhood. In a sense, he was the boy next door. I married without really appreciating how hard divorce would be.
I have to tell you: My daughter is in seventh heaven about me being in Vogue. Nothing else I have done has fazed her at all. But this! She's like, 'Oh, Mom. You don't understand. This is really big.'
I have never heard him yell, Ever. Not once in seventeen years. He's not a yeller.
Because my dad worked at the university, he could swing by and take Laura to school and pick her up from her first day of nursery school until the day she graduated from high school. They would often have breakfast and have these wonderful conversations.”

Valerie Jarrett (1956) Chicago lawyer, businesswoman, civic leader; senior advisor to U.S. Senator Barack Obama

September 2008 interview with Vogue https://web.archive.org/web/20080930190831/http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/2008_Oct_Valerie_Jarrett//

Benny Hinn photo

“I don't need gold in heaven, I gotta have it now.”

Benny Hinn (1952) American-Canadian evangelist

[Bloom, John, (Reprinted on Website of Trinity Foundation, Inc.), The Heretic, D Magazine, 2003-08, http://www.trinityfi.org/press/heretic.html, 2006-10-21]

Julian of Norwich photo
Julian of Norwich photo
William Blake photo

“A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage.”

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

Source: 1800s, Auguries of Innocence (1803), Line 5

Julian (emperor) photo