Afterlife Quotes

There is a place called 'heaven' where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Live to ask. Die to answer. ~ Raheel Farooq

Perhaps Nickel was the very afterlife that awaited him, with a White House down the hill and an eternity of oatmeal and an infinite brotherhood of broken boys. ~ Colson Whitehead

The secret of wisdom is to be overly curious, like a cat--to take the time to look closely, to use all your senses to see and to touch and to taste and to smell and to hear, and to die because you were overly curious. To keep on wondering...about the afterlife. That is our only mission. Only one. If we don't wonder, then we will never, ever be curious. Then, if like the cat, you wondered too far...you simply no longer will have to ever wonder again. Your mission will be fulfilled. All because of curiosity.

--from The Wise-ass Man who butchered Eve Merriam's wisdom...and Her Secret ~ Stan Sudan

If we do survive death, then the next world is veiled from us for a purpose. Regardless of our endless conjecture, each of us will make this discovery individually, whether we wish to or not. However, we do know the conditions of the world around us and its inhabitants; we know these in detail. We can only conclude, then, that we are meant to focus on this world in which we live, and not groundless speculation about the next. History shows that an obsession with the afterlife smothers our concern for the living. ~ J.L. Bryan

I don't feel so sad when somebody dies, Julio, because they fly away to explore the stars and planets. When it's our turn we join them in exploring the universe. ~ Gilbert Hernandez

I also don't believe that whatever come after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions-that sounds too much like an Erudite afterlife to me, all accuracy and no feeling. ~ Veronica Roth

The only satisfactory thing about death is that our knowledge about it is unsatisfactory. ~ Raheel Farooq

Hell is the impossibility of reason. ~ Oliver Stone

Kill him with your blessings of healing. ~ H. L. Balcomb

It is what we see when we imagine what the afterlife must be like: our happiest triumphs, our most sincere moments, stolen from the seam of our lives, a respite just before the onset of imminent tragedy. ~ Joe Meno

I remember when I first encountered anthropocentrism. I was in primary school and, in preparation for our confirmation, the class was learning about the afterlife. ~ John Burnside

Sometimes I think the resurrection of the body, unless much improved in construction, a mistake! ~ Evelyn Underhill

I woke up dead.
Not only dead...but in hell.
I had always been somewhat sketchy on what the afterlife - were there actually such a thing - would be like for a person such as I. From all accounts and all my imaginings, I figured it would be one of two things. Either I would be surrounded by great, burning masses that were endlessly immolating souls in torment... or else I would find myself trapped within my own mind as a helpless bystander, condemned to watching me live out my life over and over again and powerless to do anything to change any of it. When idle speculation prompted me to dwell on these two options, I would find myself drawn invariably to the former, since the later was just too hideous to contemplate.
...
I was almost afraid to open my eyes, because once I did, I would know one way or the other. Perhaps I could have just lain there forever. Perhaps I was supposed to. Perhaps that was my true condemnation: to simply reside in hell with my eyes closed afraid of opening them lest matters deteriorate even further than they already had. This, in turn, made me dwell on the fact that every time I had believed things couldn't get worse, they promptly had done so with almost gleeful enthusiasm . ~ Peter David

Fine, let's have the "We're-safe-in-here-it's-INSANE-for-you-to-go-out" conversation instead. ~ Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. ~ Dante Alighieri

I don't believe in the afterlife. ~ W.P. Kinsella

If there is but one pearl of wisdom I have to impart to you, after all my observations here thus far, it is do not take yourself too seriously. Because when you get here, you might just find that you are not exactly who or what you thought you were. ~ Natasha Rendell

The human mind is so limited it can only build an arbitrary heaven - and usually the physical comforts they endow it with are naively the kind that can be perceived as we humans perceive - nothing more. No: perhaps I will awake to find myself burning in hell. I think not. I think I will be snuffed out. Black is sleep; black is a fainting spell; and black is death, with no light, no waking. ~ Sylvia Plath

In a world where people are too languid to make something of themselves out of effort, I sell them hope. What they do with it is up to them. Invariably they drink it and then hurl it down a gutter, but that's their choice and their freedom. I won't judge them. ~ E.A.A. Wilson

No matter what we survivors like to tell ourselves about the afterlife, when someone dies, everything is over. ~ Jodi Picoult

What the winners of finite games achieve is not properly an afterlife but an afterworld, not continuing existence but continuing recognition of their titles. ~ James P. Carse

I worked hard and made my own way, just as my father had. And just, I'm sure, as he hoped I would. I learned, from observing him, the satisfaction that comes from striving and seeing a dream fulfilled. ~ Sigourney Weaver

We are such skeptics that we find it difficult to believe in God and angels and a spiritual afterlife, but a moment of fear makes our spirit so vulnerable that it allows us to believe in something beyond that. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

The storage capacity of the average human brain is two-hundred and fifty-six exabytes. However, the average adult human only uses approximately one billionth of that storage space effectively. This means my knowledge capacity is approximately three thousand trillion times that of your average human. ~ Michael Monroe

And since he cannot spend and use aright
The little time here given him in trust,
But wasteth it in weary undelight
Of foolish toil and trouble, strife and lust,
He naturally claimeth to inherit
The everlasting Future, that his merit
May have full scope; as surely is most just. ~ James Thomson

Entrust yourself in finding purpose when all seems lost and you have no idea on what to do. It was the same for me once, however, it is always the smallest things that got me to find a purpose of why I was sent here by the Gods in the Afterlife. ~ Lunar Brogley

If you force me to pay a debt that is not mine, let me thank you in the afterlife ~ Miguel El Portugues

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason. ~ James Madison

I'm simply a nonbeliever and have been forever ... I'm interested in saying, 'Let us discuss the existential question. We are all going to die, that is the end of all consciousness. There is no afterlife. There is no God. Now what do we do.' That's the point where it starts getting interesting to me. ~ David Cronenberg

I'm done playing Brokeback Riverdale with you. ~ Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

If this world isn't good enough for us then an afterlife won't be enough ... ~ Fanny Howe

Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses. ~ Anne Sexton

He wouldn't be the one to prove to the world that there was an afterlife, but he hoped to be the one to prove it to himself, though he would have a few stern questions for a Creator who made people haunt libraries. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

The eyes of god are upon you, I mean the eyes of society. We are prisoners of societies in which we live ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

He walked out with the inner lightness of an author who has delivered. He wore a green tweed with flap pockets, cast into the river at Rosnaree, began his heart attack, and entered the Afterlife just after his fly was taken. ~ Niall Williams

Faith is, by its very definition, belief without proof. ~ Stephen King

I came then to a conviction that has never left me: that there is too much for me to attend to in this mortal life without overspeculation on the immortal, that it is not necessary to my peace of mind or to my effort to be a decent and useful person, to have a definite assurance about the affairs of the next world. ~ Ida Tarbell

Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us. ~ Jim Carroll

If critics and fanboys weren't suckers for simplistic nihilism and high-pressure marketing, Afterlife would be universally acclaimed as a visionary feat, superior to Inception and Avatar on every level. ~ Armond White

Religion's greatest "sin" lies in displacing human endeavor, thought, time, resources and efforts from this world, our only world, in order to exalt a highly unlikely, unknowable, unseeable, unprovable and unbelievable pretend afterworld. The only afterlife that ought to concern us is leaving our descendants (along with the other animals and life we share our planet with) a secure and pleasant future. ~ Annie Laurie Gaylor

Reincarnation?"
He shrugged. "I've never seen any evidence that it's real. But I've never seen anything that disproves it either. I believe the afterlife is better than what we have here - and it would take something extraordinary to make someone willing to come back. ~ Patricia Briggs

When he would try to reason with her, she would tell him she did not want to be without him in the afterlife; he was all she had in this world and all she wanted for the next. ~ Ramita Navai

Over time, my belief in many things has wavered: marriage, the afterlife, Woody Allen. ~ Lena Dunham

I have a traditional view of the afterlife ... heaven, hell and judgments. But the accounts of those places are scant, and I believe it's on purpose. We aren't supposed to try to figure out the architecture of the afterlife, since the big game is here in this life. ~ Doug TenNapel

A long time after, while the Afterlife continued on, the Universe was coming to its end. The expanding universe had long since started to slow, then it had started to collapse back on itself. ~ Larry Yoakum III

Christians and Jews often taunted the Arabs about their polytheistic beliefs and their lack of an overarching creed and an afterlife. Consequently, a sense of religious inferiority arose among the desert dwellers, along with a pent-up desire for a comprehensive belief system of their own. ~ William J. Bernstein

The cure for sex is marriage;the cure for love is marriage;the cure for infidelity is divorce;the cure for unhappiness is work;the cure for extreme unhappiness is drink;the cure for death is a frail belief in the afterlife. ~ Julian Barnes

Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final. ~ Tom Stoppard

And I don't believe you dead. How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I'll have to speak to in a different way, but you not dead to me Nettie. And never will you be. ~ Alice Walker

When videotape came so a lot of movies that I do have a kind of afterlife in video. Things where movies that I do would come and go; they still come and go but you can go rent them and see them on TV. ~ Christopher Walken

I believe there's more than this-that maybe when we die our brains conjure up some kind of shutdown experience, and that's what people try to sum up as the afterlife. Something else is going to happen and it's going to be crazy and confusing and weird, and we probably won't know what it's all about. It'll just be another place where we're trying to understand why we exist at all. ~ Flying Lotus

Question Everything ~ Josh Langley

Life's just a dream. It isn't real. I know that you can't see that yet. You want me to wake up but in my death I did wake up and I saw you were still sleeping. ~ Kate McGahan

I promise to love you forever in this life and wherever we go in the afterlife, because I know I can't go on in any life unless you're in it too. ~ J.A. Redmerski

The real help victims of injustice need is to get the will, skill and resources to fight back. There may or may not be a hell in afterlife but suffering injustice quietly is a sin, punishment for which is a living hell here and now. ~ R.N. Prasher

I've talked to people who felt very strongly that Chris has done things for them since he died. The stories move me, even though I don't really know what to think about them.
I guess if you think of how Chris acted as protector during his life, and how he wanted the people he loved to be happy, it makes sense that he might spend some of his energy in the afterlife to keep doing that. I could easily see him talking God into letting him come back from time to time to take care of things down here.
I'm sure there are rules to follow--but knowing Chris, if there's a way around them, he's figured it out. ~ Taya Kyle

I would like to believe in an afterlife; it makes things more palatable. But I'm not banking on it. ~ Jarvis Cocker

It is to be doubted whether anybody who said good-bye to Bert had any faith or interest whatsoever in the life everlasting. This life had, some of them thought, been quite bad enough. ~ Margaret Drabble

Well one tiny poisonous spider can kill a very large man if it bites him in the right place. ~ Michael Monroe

The daughter of Sin was determined to go
To the dark house, dwelling of Erkalla's god,
To the house which those who enter cannot leave,
On the road where travelling is one-way only,
To the house where those who enter are deprived of light,
Where dust is their food, clay their bread.
They see no light, they dwell in darkness,
They are clothed like birds, with feathers. ~ Stephanie Dalley

The Angel of Death took the woman's frail hand. "Don't be afraid." she said. "Life is your past. Death, on the other hand, is your soul preparing for a new beginning. A brand new adventure, if you like." An excerpt from Paradox - Equilibrium. Book 4 in the Paradox series (release date 2013) ~ Patti Roberts

Great, I thought. The afterlife is just like Hollywood, with nobodies passing themselves off as somebodies. My ongoing strategy of postponing death had been vindicated. ~ Duke Haney

Nothing in this or the next world was worse than physical pain. In the afterlife, as no more than a soul, he would be without a body to beat, skin to peel, blood to flow, eyes to gouge, fingernails to pry, lungs to drown, ventricles to stop, and so the retribution of God would always be gentler than the retribution of man. ~ Anthony Marra

Cast aside those who liken godliness to whimsy and who try to combine their greed for wealth with their desire for a happy afterlife. ~ Khalil

My understanding of life is very existential. I think that we are our bodies. There's nothing else, and when we die, that's it. No afterlife. ~ David Cronenberg

The only consciousness that persists in the hereafter is the consciousness of pain. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Ohhhhhhh," she groaned, jerking up from the reclining seat as the tears exploded. She felt as devastated as if she were still in the body of the grizzled fighting man. Convulsing sobs of remorse tortured her energy body and she rocked it like a baby, holding her midsection, feeling as if her stomach would turn inside out. She struggled to speak, gulping in habit for air that didn't exist, which would have been useless to her energy lungs anyway.
She had to know.
"Who? Who ... was ... he?" she managed in spurts. "The boy - "
"You know the answer already, don't you?" Coriskancsia replied gently. ~ Lianne Downey

Now love doesn't stop at death - or if it does, it's a pretty poor sort of love! In fact, grief could almost be defined as the form love takes when the object of love has been removed; it is love embracing an empty space, love kissing thin air and feeling the pain of nothingness. But there is no reason at all why love should discontinue the practice of holding the beloved in prayer before God. ~ N. T. Wright

The average human lifespan compared to the age of the universe is the same as comparing a blink of an eye to that human lifespan. Relatively speaking, short and long lifespans are the same. Both are non-existent compared to the infinite that's ahead. Furthermore, we cannot change the past, and have no guarantees for the future. We are only in charge of the present. The present is nothing - and it is everything. ~ John K. Brown

Ove looks at the group assembled around him, as if he's been kidnapped and taken to a parallel universe. For a moment he thinks about swerving off the road, until he realises that the worst case scenario would be that they all accompanied him into the afterlife. ~ Fredrik Backman

I had hoped you would protest, but please don't argue. ~ Lotte Lehmann

In Western culture, the 'miracles' referenced in scripture seem to have been relegated to the past as if to imply that they were reserved exclusively for certain historical periods. ~ Mark Ireland

Be thou of Zen. Remember, in tranquillity, that the Absolute, the Tao, is within thee, that no priest or cult or dogma or book or saying or teaching or teacher stands between Thou and It. Know that Good and Evil are irrelevant, I and Thou irrelevant, Inside and Outside irrelevant as are Life and Death. Enter into the Sphere where there is no fear of death nor hope of afterlife, where thou art free of the impediments of life or the needs of salvation. Thou art thyself the Tao. Be thou, now, a rock against which the waves of life rush in vain. ~ James Clavell

It would be especially comforting to believe that I have the answer to the question, What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that - the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness, persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my laptop? ~ Mary Roach

Life goes on. And so does death. ~ Michael L. Martin Jr.

[I]n the years that followed the persecutions, Christianity came to see itself, with great pride, as a persecuted Church. Its greatest heroes were not those who did good deeds but those who died in the most painful way. If you were willing to die an excruciating end in the arena then, whatever your previous holiness or lack thereof, you went straight to heaven: martyrdom wiped out all sins on the point of death.
As well as getting there faster, martyrs enjoyed preferential terms in paradise, getting to wear the much-desired martyr's crown. Tempting celestial terms were offered: it was said that the scripture promised 'multiplication, even to a hundred times, of brothers, children, parents, land and homes'. Precisely how this celestial sum had been calculated is not clear but the general principle was: those who died early, publicly and painfully would be best rewarded. In many of the martyr tales the driving force is less that the Romans want to kill – and more that the Christians want to die. Why wouldn't they? Paradoxically, martyrdom held considerable benefits for those willing to take it on. One was its egalitarian entry qualifications. As George Bernard Shaw acidly observed over a millennium later, martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
More than that, in a socially and sexually unequal era it was a way in which women and even slaves might shine. Unlike most positions of power in the highly socially stratified late Roman Empire, this ~ Catherine Nixey

Human knowledge hasn't been complete enough to understand the afterlife if it hasn't been through the valley of death. ~ Toba Beta

Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic. ~ Henry David Thoreau

She said that everything that disappeared from our side went over to theirs, where they kept living normal lives, waiting for the things still lingering with us to join them, and make the world whole once more. ~ Alexandra Kleeman

It occurs to me as I write that this "white light," usually presented dippily (evidence of afterlife, higher power), is in fact precisely consistent with the oxygen deficit that occurs as blood flow to the brain decreases. "Everything went white," those whose blood pressure has dropped say of the instant before they faint. ~ Joan Didion

And here we see again that we do not decide our own lives. Dieneke, even if we won't see each other again on earth, we will never be sorry for what we did, that we took this stand. ~ Diet Eman

Then I think about how you went out, and I think… you know, it doesn't balance out. One selfless deed, after all the shit you did? No. But that's your cross to bear, not mine. I don't believe in an afterlife or anything like that, but, well, I guess that's the mark you left. When we die, all that's left are the memories, the place we take in people's hearts. ~ Wildbow

I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. ~ Stephen Hawking

How do you convince someone they're not thinking clearly, when they're not thinking clearly? What we're actually saying is no magic, no afterlife, no higher moral authoritative father-figure, no security, and no happy ever after. This is a tough sell. ~ Phil Plait

The authors of Job and Ecclesiastes explicitly state that there is no afterlife. ~ Bart D. Ehrman

As I apologized to her a flicker of panic raced through me and then faded away. There wasn't enough life left in me to panic. I'd made a mistake and I was dying. Apparently not even a Speck afterlife was available to me. I'd simply stop being. Apparently I hadn't died correctly. Oops. ~ Robin Hobb

If the only option you leave poor people with is to resort to violence in order to survive, they'll do just that. And there are lots more poor people in this world than there are rich ones. ~ Michael Monroe

Belief in God? An afterlife? I believe in rock: this apodictic rock beneath my feet. ~ Edward Abbey

Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed 'holy' leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife. Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism. ~ Dan Barker

Perhaps there was another life, not so sad, that I missed somehow this time, and will have in another world. ~ Nick Harkaway

Did my father talk to me? It's true, he didn't say a lot to me, but I knew what had to be done. No need for big speeches. He taught me the fundamentals of our religion: My son, Islam is simple: you are alone responsible for yourself before God, so if you are good, you will find goodness in the afterlife, and if you are bad, you'll find that instead. There's no mystery: everything depends on how you treat people, especially the weak, the poor, so Islam, that means you pray, you address the Creator and don't do evil around you, don't lie, don't steal, don't betray your wife or your country, don't kill- but do I really need to remind you of this? ~ Tahar Ben Jelloun

The idea of an afterlife where you can be reunited with loved ones can be immensely consoling - though not to me. ~ Richard Dawkins

I'll never tire of her warm smile or bright green eyes. She's mine, in sickness and in health, till death do us part-scratch that- even in the afterlife she's mine and I'll fight any spirity-ghost bastard that attempts to fuck this up. ~ Skyla Madi

Just when she thought she had it all figured out something happened to test her faith or alter her view of reality. ~ Deanna Kahler

I've sworn off agnosticism, which I now call cowardly atheism. I've come to the position that in the complete absence of any supporting data whatsover for the persistence of the individual in some spiritual form, it is necessary to operate under the provisional conclusion that there is no afterlife and then be ready to amend that if I find out otherwise. ~ James Cameron

She had always enjoyed the warm, calming feeling of the sand. It slipped as a silken scarf of liquid sunshine across the surface of her skin. Kayn took one hand and ran it over the surface of the sand, and it shifted as though it had been moved by a light breeze without her hand making contact. Her life now had no room for feet being firmly planted on the ground. She had to allow her mind to take off in flight and accept the impossible. She had to embrace life as a toddler. In a child's world, every breath of life is a mystery; everything had the possibility of being magic. ~ Kim Cormack

The afterlife mattered to me. Heaven and hell and reincarnation. As much as I wanted to know how Alaska had died, I wanted to know where she was now, if anywhere. ~ John Green

I had hoped that he has mouth smell or something other repelling, but nothing! It was even charming. ~ Michelle Hunziker

What if in the afterlife you did not meet God? Could you still believe in God? ~ Ross Friedman