quotations about Heaven
It is possible that the distance of heaven lies wholly in the veil of flesh, which we now want power to penetrate. A new sense, a new eye, might show the spiritual world compassing us on every side.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Amid the discords of this life, it is blessed to think of heaven, where God draws after him an everlasting train of music; for all thoughts are harmonious and all feelings vocal, and so there is round about his feet eternal melody.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven.
PHILLIPS BROOKS
"The Gift and Its Return", Sermons
Heaven is homelike, we are told,
To beggars as to kings;
And resurrection is a fashion
Antedating wings.
NELLIE SEELYE EVANS
"Equality"
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"
Heaven for climate, and hell for society.
MARK TWAIN
speech to the Acorn Society, 1901
To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.
BUDDHIST PROVERB
I dare not think that any supercelestial heaven, or whatsoever else ... was increate and eternal. And as for the place of God before the world created, the finite wisdom of mortal men hath no perception of it; neither can it limit the seat of infinite power, no more than infinite power itself can be limited; for his place is in himself, whom no magnitude else can contain.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
The First Part of the History of the World: Intreating of the Beginning and First Ages of the Same
Aim at heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.
TOM ROBBINS
Skinny Legs and All
Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.
RICHARD BACH
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
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
The way of Heaven and Earth may be completely declared in one sentence: They are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable.
CONFUCIUS
The Doctrine of the Mean
Seeking Heaven through righteousness is not seeking righteousness, but something else;--it is not loving goodness for goodness' sake, but for its rewards.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Howling is the noise of hell, singing the voice of heaven.
JOHN DONNE
"Sermon LXVI"
S'pose Heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there for ever, but more like ... Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or ... upstairs windows when you're lost ...
DAVID MITCHELL
The Bone Clocks
You will say, how can one reach heaven to lay anything there? I will ask you also another question. How can a man being in France reach into England to lay anything there? By exchange.... You know that to avoid the danger of pirates and the inconvenience of foreign coin not current at home, it is the use of merchants to pay it there, to receive it here. Such a thing is there in this "laying up." We are here as strangers; the place where we wish ourselves is our country, even paradise--if so be we send our carriage thither before; if not, I fear we intend some other place, it is not our country.
LANCELOT ANDREWES
Ninety-six Sermons
What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Damned
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
While the wish of many individuals is to arrive at heaven, we daily behold them on the way to hell.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs