CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I don't want to express an opinion. You see, I have friends in both places.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I can't believe in the God of my Fathers. If there is one Mind which understands all things, it will comprehend me in my unbelief. I don't know whose hand hung Hesperus in the sky, and fixed the Dog Star, and scattered the shining dust of Heaven, and fired the sun, and froze the darkness between the lonely worlds that spin in space.

Gerald Kersh (1911-1968)
British author, journalist

The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
English author, social thinker

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
American journalist

Limbus fatuorum is the name given by the old schoolmen to the intermediate region between heaven and hell, where dwelt what Dante calls "the praiseless and the blameless dead," or, in other words, fools, idiots and lunatics.

John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet

It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilised taste.

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
British novelist

Heaven is the place where the donkey at last catches up with the carrot.

anonymous

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Anglo-Irish satirist

Hell is paved with good intentions, but heaven goes in for something more dependable. Solid gold.

Joyce Cary (1888-1957)
British novelist

I verily think that a man buyeth hell here with so much pain that he might have heaven with less than the one-half.

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
English statesman, author

The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
German philosopher

Look for me in the nurseries of heaven.

Francis Thompson (1859-1907)
English poet

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet

The marriage state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of Heaven and Hell we are capable of receiving in this life.

Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729)
English essayist, dramatist, editor

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
German philosopher

The purpose of population is not ultimately peopling earth.
It is to fill heaven.

G. D. Leonard (b. 1921)
Bishop of London
1983

Heaven is not built of country seats
But little queer suburban streets.

Christopher Morley (1890-1957)
American novelist, journalist

It's true Heaven forbids some pleasures, but a compromise can usually be found.

Moliere (1622-1673)
French playwright

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
English poet

We understand living for others and dying for others. The first is easy . . . it's a way out of boredom. To make the second popular we had to invent a belief in personal resurrection.

Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946)

The dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns.

Hamlet, Hamlet
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it's being held.

Woody Allen (b. 1935)

Oh, one world at a time!

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
American philosopher, author, naturalist

Never did Christ utter a single word attesting to a personal resurrection and a life beyond the grave.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

It was the schoolboy who said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: "My dear, we live in an age of transition."

W. R. Inge (1860-1954)

A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
English cleric

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the
Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
trans. Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883)

We, who have already borne on the road to Paradise the lives of the best among us, want a difficult, erect, implacable Paradise; a Paradise where one can never rest and which has, beside the threshold of the gates, angels with swords.

J. A. Primo de Rivera (1903-1936)
Spanish Falangist politician

Public life is the paradise of voluble windbags.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Thought would destroy their paradise.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
English poet

God is inconceivable, immortality is unbelievable, but duty is peremptory and absolute.

George Eliot (1819-1880)
English novelist

Our theories of the eternal are as valuable as are those which a chick which has not broken its way through its shell might form of the outside world.

Gautama the Buddha (c. 560-c. 480 BC)

He had decided to live for ever or die in the attempt.

Joseph Heller (b. 1923)
American novelist

The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which shall last forever.

Anatole France (1844-1924)

What man is capable of the insane self-conceit of believing that an eternity of himself would be tolerable even to himself?

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

The idea of immortality . . . will continue . . . as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow - Hope, shining upon the tears of grief.

Ralph G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)

Our very life depends on our knowing whether the soul is mortal or immortal.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work . . . I want to achieve it through not dying.

Woody Allen (b. 1935)

To himself everyone is an immortal; he may know that he going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
English author

If you wish to live forever you must be wicked enough to be irretrievably damned; in hell alone do people retain their sinful nature: that is to say, their individuality.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Anglo-Irish playwright, critic

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Susan Ertz (1894-1985)

Either the soul is immortal and we shall not die, or it perishes with the flesh, and we shall not know then that we are dead. Live, then, as if you were eternal.

Andre Maurois (1885-1967)

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.

Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961)
Swedish statesman, Secretary-General of UN

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Anglo-Irish satirist

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.

Socrates (469-399 BC)
Greek philosopher

I want to be forgotten even by God.

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

I am not afraid of anything. If you fear God you do not fear anything else.

Colonel Muhammar Qaddafi (b. 1938)
Libyan leader

God, that dumping ground of our dreams.

Jean Rostand (1894-1977)

The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist.

Stendhal (1783-1842)
French author

I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.

Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
French writer

A comprehended God is no God.

John Chrysostom (345-407)
Greek ecclesiast, hermit

Every conjecture we can form with regard to the works of God has as little probability as the conjectures of a child with regard to the works of a man.

Thomas Reid (1710-1796)

No statement about God is simply, literally true. God is far more than can be measured, described, defined in ordinary language, or pinned down to any particular happening.

David Jenkins (b. 1925)

And almost every one when age,
Disease, or sorrows strike him,
Inclines to think there is a God,
Or something very like Him.

A. H. Clough (1819-1861)

God is for men and religion for women.

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
English novelist

Why is it when we talk to God, we're said to be praying - but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic?

Lily Tomlin (b. 1939)

For those who believe in God no explanation is needed; for those who do not believe in God no explanation is possible.

Father John Lafarge (b. 1880)
of the cures of Lourdes

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead;
in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

Erich Fromm (1900-1980)

God is not a cosmic bell-boy for whom we can press a button to get things.

H. E. Fosdick (1878-1969)
American Baptist minister

Thank God I am black. White people will have a lot to answer for at the last judgement.

Bishop Desmond Tutu (b. 1932)

No one can be redeemed by another. No God and no saint is able to shield a man from the consequence of his evil doings. Every one of us must become his own redeemer.

Subhadra Bhikshu (b. d. 1917)
author of The Buddhist Way

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Alan Watts (1915-1973)

I could prove God statistically.

George Gallup (1901-1984)

Cure yourself of the condition of bothering about how you look to other people. Be concerned only . . . with the idea God has of you.

Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936)
Spanish philosopher, poet, novelist

"When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?" "O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying 'Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty!' "

William Blake (1757-1827)
English poet, artist

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.

Saint Augustine (354-430)
theologian

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

O Lord, if there is a Lord, save my soul, if I have a soul.

Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1892)

I've never met a healthy person who worried much about his health, or a good person who worried about his soul.

J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964)

From coupler-flange to spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God -
Predestination in the stride o' yon connectin'-rod.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
English author

Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a go of it. We've only ourselves.

Jean, The Entertainer
John Osborne (b. 1929)
British playwright

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Eden Philpotts (1862-1960)
British author

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.

Christopher Morley (1890-1957)
American novelist, journalist

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Saint Paul (3-67)
Apostle to the Gentiles

All man think all men mortal, but themselves.

Edward Young (1683-1765)
English poet, playwright

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
French poet, dramatist, novelist

I am a temporary enclosure for a temporary purpose; that served, my skull and teeth, my idiosyncrasy and desire, will disperse, I believe, like the timbers of a booth after the fair.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
English author, social thinker

Cheerio, see you soon.

epitaph on a gravestone

It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.

Woody Allen (b. 1935)
American filmmaker

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British statesman, writer
on the eve of his 75th birthday

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Welsh poet

So that he seemed not to relinquish life, but to leave one home for another.

Cornelius Nepos (b. 1st century BC)
Roman historian, biographer

We often congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so at the moment of death.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
American novelist

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
German philosopher

Even in the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Russian novelist, philosopher
on his deathbed, answering pleas that he
should return to the Church

The truth (is) that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

Helen Hayes
Guideposts, January 1960

Chapter Seventeen

Contents