HELL QUOTES III
quotations about Hell
Hell is a city much like London --
A populous and smoky city.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Peter Bell the Third"
Hell is the final sentence that says you refused regularly to live for the purpose for which you were made, and the only alternative is to sentence you away for all eternity. So it is punishment. But it's also the natural consequence of a life that has been lived in a certain direction.
LEE STROBEL
The Case for Faith
Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.
JOHN BUNYAN
The Pilgrim's Progress
Hell is a state of mind. It is a remnant of ancient man's fears and an anachronism from our primitive past. I disavow it; therefore it does not exist.
S. KAYE SAUNDERS
Hell Exposed
Hell is every day. It's now.
MALIKA MOKEDDEM
The Forbidden Woman
In this life our sorrows are either not very long or not very great because nature either overcomes them by habits or puts an end to them by sinking under their weight. But in hell the torments cannot be overcome by habit, for while they are of terrible intensity they are at the same time of continual variety, each pain, so to speak, taking fire from another and re-endowing that which has enkindled it with a still fiercer flame.
JAMES JOYCE
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Consider, children ... the pain of touching the tip of your finger to your mother's stove, even for a fraction of a second. That is an experience which most of you have suffered. Now try to imagine that pain, not simply on a fingertip but spread over the whole surface of your body, and not for a mere second, but everlastingly. That, children, is hellfire.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
Canst thou descend, O my soul! with awful step into the doleful regions of damnation?--Let thy heart meditate terror. The more shall thy fears be alarmed to fly from the wrath to come in this thy day of merciful visitation: the more shall thy gratitude be awakened to the loving Savior, who redeems thy life from destruction, and who says unto thee, Fear not, I have the keys of hell and death. But have the doors of the shadow of death been opened unto us? Who can presume to give the geography of this dismal territory, or confidently say in what place of this dismal territory, or confidently say in what place of this large universe eternal justice has ordained this doleful dungeon? Whether it shall be in the centre of the earth or in some blazing comet or far beyond the limits of this lightsome world, where chaos and eternal darkness reign--HE only knows, before whom hell and destruction hath no covering. No thoughts can reach, no words can paint the horrors of this dreary region, where the miserable inhabitants drink of the wrath of the Almighty, and know by dreadful experience what is the power of his anger. Waving the metaphorical descriptions of darkness, worms, and fire; there dwells the most restless and unsatisfied desire; the most overwhelming shame; the most horrible fear; the most dismal sorrow; the most tormenting envy; the most unrelenting hardness of heart; and the most racking despair.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On the Misery of the Damned", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
Hell is like this. It's this cowering in the bottom of the cellar far from the smouldering trapdoor, between pumpkins and tubs of apples. It's the smell of a karri forest rising into the sky and the bodies of roos and possums returning to the earth as carbon and the cooking smell falling through the dimness like this. Trees go off like bombs out in the light and the cauldron boils and spits all about. Hell is being six years old and wondering why you're alone in the dark and no one else has come down yet. It's the sound of your own breathing, the salty stink of your bloomers, the way the walls have warmed, the flickering cracks, the screams like a thousand nails being drawn, the hammering, throttling noises, the way the rats are panicking and throwing themselves against things. Hell is that shallowbreathing trance you slip into, the silence that goes on and on until it's grown outside you and fallen on the world. Hell is when you hear noises in the world again, though nothing in yourself, and men's voices make your throat cry so raw that light bolts into the cellar with a gout of ash and charcoal and the burning taste of air. Hell is when you're dragged out past the black bones and belt buckles that are the others who never came down, out onto the powder white earth beneath the sky green as bile and swirling with vapours. Hell is the sight of your father's face streaked with the ride, the twitching cast on him, the registration of facts. Hell. It's only you left, and you're awake.
TIM WINTON
Cloudstreet
There is nothing funny about Hell. Hollywood laughs at it, but it's still not funny. A lot of people use hell as a byword or a curse word, but it's still not funny. University professors mock it, but it's not funny. Philosophers explain it away, but it's still not funny. Hell is no joke.
SHELTON L. SMITH
Hell is for Real!
It was God who created hell as a place to store evil. He didn't do a good job of keeping it there though.
PHILIP ZIMBARDO
TED talk, Sep. 2008
Hell doesn't have a before. Hell is stuck in time, repeating endlessly. Hell doesn't have a past. It just is.
JONATHAN LETHEM
The Wall of the Sky
Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Man and Superman
Hell doesn't even exist ... It's all in our minds. We invented it as a warning to those who don't live up to our standards.
S. KAYE SAUNDERS
Hell Exposed
Hell doesn't sound like a fun place, regardless of what some people jokingly say. I have heard folks say, "Why go to Heaven, when all my friends will be in Hell?" Can I tell you something? Spending eternity in Hell isn't funny. You might want to pick other "friends."
JULIE BOVINES
God God?
Personally I didn't believe God had a private torture chamber. Hell was being cut off from God, cut off from his power, his energy, Him.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Burnt Offerings
Lost in Hell,-Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee;
Say to her, "My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here."
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
Collected Poems
If you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.
NEIL GAIMAN & TERRY PRATCHETT
Good Omens
It is easy to go down to hell; night and day the gates of Dark Death stand wide; but to climb back up again, to retrace one's steps to the open air, their lies the problem, the difficult task.
VIRGIL
The Aeneid
If memory survived eternally, then indeed there might be justification for a belief in hell.
STACY AUMONIER
"That Which Is Always Changing", One After Another