Quotes about heaven page 7
“It is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering into ourselves.”
Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint
Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales
Source: Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
“there was a reason why there was only a single stairway to heaven, but an entire highway to hell.”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist
Source: Illusion
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
As quoted in Philosophy on the Go (2007) by Joey Green, p. 222
General sources
N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop
Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
“…to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.”
Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All
Variant: To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.
Source: Skinny Legs and All (1990)
Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)
“If it's possible to send a message from heaven, I'll get one to you.”
Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer
Source: Don't Die, My Love
“Surely you’ve been sent from the heavens to teach us mortals what beauty is.”
Sidney Sheldon book Memories of Midnight
Source: Memories of Midnight
“Politicians promise you heaven before election and give you hell after”
Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches
“Lower your expectations of earth. This isn't Heaven, so don't expect it to be.”
Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer
“if we have not found the heaven within, we have not found the heaven without”
James Hilton book Lost Horizon
Source: Lost Horizon
“Heaven on Earth is a choice you
must make, not a place you must find.”
Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer
“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
20 December 1822
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)
“It's a match made in heaven… by a retarded angel.”
Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.”
Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress
Source: Me: Stories of My Life
“That was the justice of Heaven. I trust that you are not dismayed.”
Cassandra Clare book City of Glass
Source: City of Glass
Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass
Lyra to Pan in Ch. 38 : The Botanic Garden
Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000)
Context: "I remember. He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn’t live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place."
"He said we had to build something…"
"That’s why we needed our full life, Pan... we wouldn’t have been able to build it. No one could if they put themselves first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we’ve got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we’ll build…"
“When an evil masochist dies, does he go to hell, or would heaven be a better punishment?”
Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author
Jack Kerouac book On the Road
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.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Walking (June 1862)
Source: Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
“I'd storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.”
Lois McMaster Bujold The Curse of Chalion
Source: The Curse of Chalion
“Good actions are the invisible hinges on the doors of heaven.”
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Gena Showalter (1975) American writer
Source: The Darkest Secret
“Who has not found the Heaven — below —
Will fail of it above”
Emily Dickinson Who has not found the Heaven — below —
1544: Who has not found the Heaven — below —
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Source: The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
“With all respects to heaven, I like it here.”
Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin
Source: Let the Great World Spin
“Let this hell be our heaven.”
Richard Matheson book What Dreams May Come
Source: What Dreams May Come
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
1770s
Source: Letter to Abigail Adams (27 April 1777), published as Letter CXI in Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife (1841) edited by Charles Francis Adams, p. 218
“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
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer
Epitaph he composed for himself a few months before he died, as quoted in Calculusː Multivariable (2006) by Steven G. Krantz and Brian E. Blank. p. 126
Unsourced variant: I used to measure the Heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. The mind belonged to Heaven, the body's shadow lies here.
“How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.”
Robert A. Heinlein book To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Source: To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987), p. 164 (1987 Putnam edition; ISBN 9780399132674
“When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.”
Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged
Variant: When I die I hope to go to heaven--whatever that is--and I want to be able to afford the price of admission.
Source: Atlas Shrugged
William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience
St. 5
1790s, The Tyger (1794)
Source: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
“There wasn't a lot of bullshit in my heaven.”
Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones
Source: The Lovely Bones
“"And then what?" said her Dæmon sleepily "build what?"
"The Republic of Heaven."”
Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass
Lyra and Pan in Ch. 38 : The Botanic Garden (closing words)
Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000)
John Fante book The Brotherhood of the Grape
Source: The Brotherhood of the Grape (1977)
Context: Nobody crossed him without a battle. He disliked almost everything, particularly his wife, his children, his neighbors, his church, his priest, his town, his state, his country, and the country from which he emigrated. Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the sun or the stars, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.
“When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine.
Pigs in Heaven”
Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist
“You grieve
Not that heaven does not exist but
That it exists without us”
W.S. Merwin (1927–2019) American poet
Source: The Second Four Books of Poems: The Moving Target / The Lice / The Carrier of Ladders / Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment
“As long as you do things for God, you are a Hall of Famer in heaven's list.”
Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition
“I wish the rent Was heaven sent.”
Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist
Source: The Collected Poems
Immanuel Kant book Critique of Practical Reason
Variant: Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Source: Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
Context: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. I have not to search for them and conjecture them as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence. The former begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense, and enlarges my connection therein to an unbounded extent with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into limitless times of their periodic motion, its beginning and continuance. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is traceable only by the understanding, and with which I discern that I am not in a merely contingent but in a universal and necessary connection, as I am also thereby with all those visible worlds. The former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates as it were my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits (a mere speck in the universe). The second, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far as may be inferred from the destination assigned to my existence by this law, a destination not restricted to conditions and limits of this life, but reaching into the infinite.
Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott
“A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.”
Chaim Potok book My Name Is Asher Lev
Source: My Name Is Asher Lev
“Without looking out of my window
I could know the ways of heaven”
George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles
“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer