quotations about Heaven
Aim at heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
God is found in this Life ... to wait for another is folly.
DAN SIMMONS
Lovedeath
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
To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.
BUDDHIST PROVERB
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
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
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 a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.
RICHARD BACH
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
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 does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven.
PHILLIPS BROOKS
"The Gift and Its Return", Sermons
To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.
TOM ROBBINS
Skinny Legs and All
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"
Heaven for climate, and hell for society.
MARK TWAIN
speech to the Acorn Society, 1901
If you keep your eyes so fixed on Heaven that you never look at the Earth, you will stumble into Hell.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
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
We may speak about a place where there are no tears, no death, no fear, no night; but those are just the benefits of heaven. The beauty of heaven is seeing God.
MAX LUCADO
Experiencing the Heart of Jesus