quotations about Heaven
When all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Doctor Faustus
God is found in this Life ... to wait for another is folly.
DAN SIMMONS
Lovedeath
Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook L", Aphorisms
There was no pain when I awoke,
No pain at all. Rest, like a goad,
Spurred my eyes open -- and light broke
Upon them like a million swords:
And she was there. There are no words.
Heaven is for a moment's span.
And ever.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"The Quality of Courage", Young Adventure
No fountain so small but that Heaven may be imaged in its bosom.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
American Note-Books, 1836
Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.
C. S. LEWIS
The Great Divorce
Were there a country on earth uniting all that is beautiful in nature, all that is great in virtue, genius, and the liberal arts, and numbering among its citizens the most illustrious patriots, poets, philosophers, philanthropists of our age, how eagerly should we cross the ocean to visit it! And how immeasurably greater is the attraction of heaven! There live the elder brethren of the creation, the sons of the morning, who sang for joy at the creation of our race; there the great and good of all ages and climes; the friends, benefactors, deliverers, ornaments of their race; the patriarch, prophet, apostle, and martyr; the true heroes of public, and still more of private, life; the father, mother, husband, wife, child, who, unrecorded by man, have walked before God in the beauty of love and self-sacrificing virtue. There are all who have built up in our hearts the power of goodness and truth, the writers from whose pages we have received the inspiration of pure and lofty sentiments, the friends whose countenances have shed light through our dwellings, and peace and strength through our hearts. There they are gathered together, safe from every storm, and triumphant over every evil; and they say to us, Come and join us in our everlasting blessedness; come and bear part in our song of praise; share our adoration, friendship, progress, and works of love.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
The Son of the Carpenter made the door of heaven so low that you must either take off your plumes or stoop humbly to enter it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
God is everywhere: yes, but how dim faith is, what a remote idea heaven is, in the modern world!
CARYLL HOUSELANDER
This War is the Passion
Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven.
PHILLIPS BROOKS
"The Gift and Its Return", Sermons
Heaven is not like flying or swimming, but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
North & South
Heaven is the day of which grace is the dawn; the rich, ripe fruit of which grace is the lovely flower; the inner shrine of that most glorious temple to which grace forms the approach and outer court.
THOMAS GUTHRIE
Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints
What, after all, is Heaven but a transition, from dim guesses and blind struggling with a mysterious and adverse fate, to the fullness of all wisdom.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
The Student: A Series of Papers
All the way to Heaven is heaven because He said, "I am the Way."
ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA
attributed, My God and My All: The Life of St. Francis of Assisi
Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
"Gradatim"
Jesus knew -- knew -- that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff.
J. D. SALINGER
Zooey
O the novelty, the beauty, the grandeur of the heaven of heavens, the house not made with hands, the city that hath foundations infinitely surpassing the temple of Solomon, and the city of David! Beautiful was the earthly paradise, and beautiful the earthly Canaan; yea, beautiful is this habitable earth, where many of the enemies of God reside. What then must be the heavenly paradise, the heavenly Canaan, which God hath prepared for them that love him!
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On the Happiness of Heaven", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers,
The moon and the stars that you have prepared,
What is mortal man that you keep him in mind,
And a son of man that you take care of him?
DAVID
Psalms 8:3-4
Ascensions into heaven are like falling leaves
sad and happy all at the same time
Going away isn't really sad
especially when your going
enables a new kind of presence
to be born.
MACRINA WIEDERKEHR
Seasons of Your Heart
While the wish of many individuals is to arrive at heaven, we daily behold them on the way to hell.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs