quotations about Heaven
May such a calm triumphant course
To sacred souls be given,
That, river-like, though born on earth,
They image only Heaven.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
"To the Trent"
There is a land, where the roses are without thorns, where the flowers are not mixed with brambles. In that land, there is eternal spring, and light without any cloud. The tree of life groweth in the midst thereof; rivers of pleasures are there, and flowers that never fade. Myriads of happy spirits are there, and surround the throne of God with a perpetual hymn. The angels with their golden harps sing praises continually, and the cherubim fly on wings of fire! This country is Heaven: it is the country of those that are good; and nothing that is wicked must inhabit there.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
Let Heaven exist, though my own place may be in Hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"The Library of Babel"
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
EMILY DICKINSON
"I never saw a Moor"
This is Heaven, when pain and evil cease, and when the Benignant Principle, untrammelled and uncontrolled, visits in the fulness of its power the universal frame of things. Human life, with all its unreal ills and transitory hopes, is as a dream, which departs before the dawn, leaving no trace of its evanescent lines.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Essay on Christianity"
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
Dreamsongs
Man is the only animal who knows that he is going to die. And so some people sustain themselves with the notion that this short life is only a beginning, that there is an endless party afterwards with music and angels somewhere up there in the exosphere.
GUY BELLAMY
A Village Called Sin
Ordinary men, to whom all things are possible, don't often, if ever, think of Heaven. It is a name, and nothing more, and they are content to wait and let things be, but to those who are doomed to be shut out for ever you cannot think what it means, you cannot guess or measure the terrible endless longing to see the gates opened, and to be able to join the white figures within.
BRAM STOKER
"A Dream of Red Hands"
For heaven shall be folded up like a scroll; and now is it stretched over us like a skin.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, July 1, 1925
Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"The Failure of Christianity,", Mother Earth, Apr. 1913
When I was little I bragged about my firefighting father: my father would go to heaven, because if he went to hell he would put out all the fires.
JODI PICOULT
My Sister's Keeper
Just as the best existence for a couple in love might be to engage in a wide variety of activities in each other's presence, what may distinguish a perfect existence in heaven might be that it is constituted by a wide variety of activities in the presence of God.
T. RYAN BYERLY & ERIC J. SILVERMAN
Paradise Understood
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Between the humble and contrite heart and the majesty of Heaven there are no barriers; the only password is prayer.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
He whose son is obedient to him, whose wife's conduct is in accordance with his wishes, and who is content with his riches has his heaven here on earth.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
The Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it.
ANATOLE FRANCE
The Revolt of the Angels
Few for heaven would care,
Should they be ever happy.
THOMAS DEKKER
The Noble Spanish Soldier
Who has not found the Heaven -- below --
Will fail of it above --
EMILY DICKINSON
"Who has not found the Heaven below"
A man dies and goes to heaven. He is being shown around by an angel. Everything is just so sweet and gentle, the total golden tender presence of God everywhere, a pond over there, a beautiful field there, and some hills for people who like to hike, and this expansiveness in every direction of sky and light and physical beauty. And there is this section separated from the rest; it has beautiful high walls. The man who's just come to heaven says, "What's over there?" The angel says, "That's for the fundamentalists. They don't consider it heaven if anyone else got in."
ANNE LAMOTT
"Jesusy Anne Lamott", Christianity Today, Jan. 1, 2003