Afterlife Speculation Quotes

Where do bad folks go when they die?
They don't go to Heaven where the angels fly
They go to the lake of fire and fry
Won't see 'em again 'til the Fourth of July ~ Nirvana

I'm the kind of person who has to experience something physically, actually touch something, before I have a clear sense of it. No matter what it is, unless I see it with my own eyes I'm not convinced. I'm a physical, not intellectual, type of person. Of course I have a certain amount of intelligence - at least I think I do. If I totally lacked that there'd be no way I could write novels. But I'm not the type who operates through pure theory or logic, not the type whose energy source is intellectual speculation. ~ Haruki Murakami

My life will never be extravagant; it will be simple, but I promise it will be filled with love, laughter, and stars released from jars, when I catch enough fireflies. ~Elijah Dirk "Epitaphs from the Afterlife ~ Autumn Rosen

No more is your master a god, Nobility, but he wants offerings from all. When Black God claims us, who will be punished for giving worship and power to a false god? The prince? Or Banjiku? ~ Tamora Pierce

How does anyone ever know anything - the past is a fog that breathes out ghost after ghost, the present a freeway thunder run at 90 mph, which makes the future the ultimate black hole of futile speculation. ~ Ben Fountain

Riding high and above the waves on extemporaneous notions of an afterlife, Michael brought one foot forward and let it dangle over the roof's edge. He knew that he did not have much time before the other would follow. Some patients below could see the figure atop the building from
the courtyard. They started to rile with anticipation, their irate murmurings incomprehensible. A
groundskeeper looked up to see what justified the commotion. Michael could hear the shouts
from below. He almost toppled when the wind picked up again, but recovered and kept one foot
dangling with the other anchored to the roof. The hoots came louder now, almost calling him
toward them like sirens guiding ships in the night. From below it was impossible to make out the
face of the balancing figurine now poised in suspended descent. Another gust came. He closed
his eyes, felt the levity manifesting, and felt the complete freedom inside. He could feel himself
gliding down like the sail of a weightless craft, forever plunging into the great beyond, below
where mermaids sing and summon their lovers home, further down into the depths of some
complacent serenity, further down where thoughts float away and never return and the lightness
is so grand that there is no other worldly place imaginable, for there is no world left to be
considered. There is only the soul, free from the prison of the body, and it is released to travel
another millennium ~ Matthew Chase Stroud

I thought at first she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something's meal. What was her-green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs-would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere.

I still think that, sometimes. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe "the afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just a matter, and matter gets recycled. ~ John Green

It reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypotheses. To refute the latter I collected many proofs, but I do not publish them ... I would dare to publish my speculations if there were people men like you. ~ Galileo Galilei

Singularity is seen as an event horizon. There's everything that comes before it and everything that comes after it and never the twain shall meet, in much the same way that Judeo-Christian theology presents its notion of the afterlife - there's a very clear and impermeable demarcation there. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

The imagination of a eunuch dwells more and longer upon the material of love than that of man or woman ... supplying, so far as he can, by speculation, the place of pleasures he can no longer enjoy. ~ John Quincy Adams

Yasunari Kawabata wrote: "When speaking of those who take their own lives, it is always most dignified to use silence or at least restrained language, for the ones left most vulnerable and most deeply hurt by such an occurrence can feel oppressed by the louder assertions of understanding, wisdom and depth of remorse foisted upon them by others. One must ask: Who is best served by speculation? Who is really able to comprehend? Perhaps we must, as human beings, continue to try and comprehend, but we will fall short. And the falling short will deepen our sense of emptiness. ~ Howard Norman

We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us? ~ Herman Melville

Dept. of Speculation is gorgeous, funny, a profound and profoundly moving work of art. Jenny Offill is a master of form and feeling, and she gets life on the page in new, startling ways. ~ Sam Lipsyte

Fynn disguise nobody but Fynn. At the time of writing I have known him for a couple of years. But there is another way in which I have known him all my life. For there is about him that transparent vulnerability which makes for a total and immediate correspondence with anyone who is prepared to throw prejudices to the wind and celebrate life as a lump of mysterious and joyful awe. But all the speculation about a trained scientist or theologian with imaginative leanings and communications was pretty well wide of the mark. Fynn, thank God, was not trained as either of these. Intelligent to the eyelashes and with a gargantuan appetite for knowledge, Fynn was early advised to eschew (may his adviser rest in peace) universities and other institutions for the purveying of processed thought. Some of his most formative thinking took place far from the quads and colleges and punted rivers amongst the small streets, warehouses, and canals of the East End. But with his modest job and his Woolworth's do-it-yourself laboratory he produced thought to which few PhD's have approximated. ~ Vernon Sproxton

I do believe that we should substantially lower student debt in this country, which is crushing millions of people. We pay for it, in my view, by a tax on Wall Street speculation. The middle class bailed out Wall Street in their time of need. Now, it is Wall Street's time to help the middle class. ~ Bernie Sanders

There is no single thing ... that is so cut and dried that one cannot attend to its secret whisper which says 'I am more than just my appearance'. If each object quivers with readiness to imply something other than itself, if each perception is a word in a poem dense with connotations, then the poet's selection of any given subject of speculation will become ... a means of attuning himself to the rhythms and harmonies of reality at large ... The notion of a network of correspondence is not an outmoded Romantic illusion: it represents a crucial intuition ... ~ Roger Cardinal

From adult diapers to bedpans? Move over, Elvis, I'm the afterlife of the party! ~ Rachel Vincent

I woke up dead. At the mall. And while I was there I fell in love, found out who killed me, haunted the living, made friends, and saved my dad's life. Not a bad afterlife.
I was a daughter, a friend, a lover, a singer, a Mathlete, a New Yorker, a girl. All of my stories were woven together.
I have a new story now. I'm the girl, the angel, who helps you move on. I'm the girl, the angel, who lives here at the mall. I'm the girl, the angel, who loves Nick. He's the boy, the angel, who helps you move on too. Who loves me. Here at the mall.
We both hope you stay safe and well. But if something should happen to you, we'll be here for you. We want to know your story.
But first, stop and listen. Can you hear that? It's the sound of life and afterlife. And it sounds exactly like music. ~ Judy Sheehan

Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors. And errors are of two kinds: errors that turn out to be true and errors that turn out to be false (which are most of them). But they both have the same character of being an imaginative speculation. I say all this because I want very much to talk about the human side of discovery and progress, and it seems to me terribly important to say this in an age in which most non-scientists are feeling a kind of loss of nerve. ~ Jacob Bronowski

Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers. ~ John Stuart Mill

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does. ~ Christopher Hitchens

A few minutes ago, I felt as if I was back in Paris,
sitting in a park.
It is funny how our mind sometimes wanders
back to times past.

When each of my parents was dying,
floating in a sea of pain medication,
their minds drifted back to their early twenties
when they were newly in love.
They both talked as if they were lost,
and they had to find each other.

In one corner of my house,
I display some things that my parents cherished:
my mother's china
and my father's fishing gear.
I don't know if there is an afterlife,
but if their ghosts visit me someday,
then their cherished things will be waiting for them.
I also display photographs of my late parents,
not when they were old,
but when they were a newlywed couple,
young, happy, smiling
and full of hope
and love. ~ Jeffrey A. White

It is significant that modern believers in power are in complete accord with the philosophy of the only great thinker who ever attempted to derive public good from private interest and who, for the sake of private good, conceived and outlined a Commonwealth whose basis and ultimate end is the accumulation of power. Hobbes, indeed, is the only great philosopher to whom the bourgeoisie can rightly and exclusively lay claim....
.... The consistency of this conclusion is in no way altered by the remarkable fact that for some three hundred years there was neither a sovereign who would "convert this Truth of Speculation into the Utility of Practice," nor a bourgeoisie politically conscious and economically mature enough openly to adopt Hobbes's philosophy of power. ~ Hannah Arendt

A good business is based on information, analysis and insight, not speculation or opinion. Not all business owners share ~ Doug Richard

Speculation is not knowledge. ~ Robert M. Price

Saudade is presented as the key feeling of the Portuguese soul. The word comes from the Latin plural solitates, "solitudes," but its derivation was influenced by the idea and sonority of the Latin salvus, "in good health," "safe." A long tradition that goes back to the origins of Lusophone language, to the thirteenth-century cantiga d'amigo, has repeatedly explored, in literature and philosophy, the special feeling of a people that has always looked beyond its transatlantic horizons. Drawn from a genuine suffering of the soul, saudade became, for philosophical speculation, particularly suitable for expressing the relationship of the human condition to temporality, finitude, and the infinite. ~ Barbara Cassin

All the improvements in machinery, however, have by no means been the inventions of those who had occasion to use the machines. Many improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade; and some by that of those who are called philosophers or men of speculation, whose trade it is not to do anything, but to observe everything; and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects. In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens. Like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business, improves dexterity, and saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it. ~ Adam Smith

By aiming for paradise, we lose sight of earth. Hope of a beyond and aspiration to an afterlife engender a sense of futility in the present. If the prospect of getting taken up to paradise generates joy, it is the mindless joy of a baby picked up from his crib. ~ Michel Onfray

I believe that the methods needed to understand ourselves do not yet exist. So this book contains a great deal of speculation about the world and how we fit into it. Some of it will seem wild, but the world is a strange place, and nothing but radical speculation gives us a hope of coming up with any candidates for the truth. That, of course, is not the same as coming up with the truth: if truth is our aim, we must be resigned to achieving it to a very limited extent, and without certainty. To redefine the aim so that its achievement is largely guaranteed, through various forms of reductionism, relativism, or historicisim, is a form of cognitive wish-fulfillment. Philosophy cannot take refuge in reduced ambitions. It is after eternal and nonlocal truth, even though we know that it is not what we are going to get. ~ Thomas Nagel

Not that the heart can be good without knowledge, for without knowledge the heart is empty. But there are two kinds of knowledge: the first is alone in its bare speculation of things, and the second is accompanied by the grace of faith and love, which causes a man to do the will of God from the heart.
The ~ John Bunyan

So far from realizing philosophy, the spectacle philosophizes reality, and turns the material life of everyone into a universe of speculation. ~ Guy Debord

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

The vision people hold of the world to come is but a reflection, with predictable wishful distortions, of the world in which they live. ~ James Baldwin

It was dusk when Ian returned, and the house seemed unnaturally quiet. His uncle was sitting near the fire, watching him with an odd expression on his face that was half anger, half speculation. Against his will Ian glanced about the room, expecting to see Elizabeth's shiny golden hair and entrancing face. When he didn't, he put his gun back on the rack above the fireplace and casually asked, "Where is everyone?"
"If you mean Jake," the vicar said, angered yet more by the way Ian deliberately avoided asking about Elizabeth, "he took a bottle of ale with him to the stable and said he was planning to drink it until the last two days were washed from his memory."
"They're back, then?"
"Jake is back," the vicar corrected as Ian walked over to the table and poured some Madeira into a glass. "The servingwomen will arrive in the morn. Elizabeth and Miss Throckmorton-Jones are gone, however."
Thinking Duncan meant they'd gone for a walk, Ian flicked a glance toward the front door. "Where have they gone at this hour?"
"Back to England."
The glass in Ian's hand froze halfway to his lips. "Why?" he snapped.
"Because Miss Cameron's uncle has accepted an offer for her hand."
The vicar watched in angry satisfaction as Ian tossed down half the contents of his glass as if he wanted to wash away the bitterness of the news. When he spoke his voice was laced with cold sarcasm. "Who's the lucky bridegroom?"
"Sir Francis Belhaven, I believe."
Ian' ~ Judith McNaught

Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamed of a better universe. ~ Rajneesh

There are all kinds of futures. There is a hoped-for future, there is a feared future, there is a predictable future, and there is an unimagined future. ~ Werner Erhard

I want to sit around a fire with rascals and bank robbers and ex-prisoners and Gypsies and Gurkhas and Aztecs and Apaches and talk about the afterlife and Voodoo and Witchcraft and prophesies and genius and star clusters.

I want to sit with these people and discuss their anxieties and indecisions and what scares them.

And I want to laugh at our spontaneity. ~ Karl Wiggins

Tiny: did someone die?
me: yeah, i did.
he smiles again at that.
tiny: well, then ... welcome to the afterlife. ~ David Levithan

What's afterlife?" Asher asked, sincerely, indicating a trio of passing shoppers laden with brightly colored bags, who turned up their noses. "There's only life. ~ David Edison

I will miss her dearly, and I hope that she is up in heaven right now watching us and smiling, even though deep down I know that if there is an afterlife, she's a pretty much open-and-shut case for hell. ~ Mindy Kaling

I have kept thee long in waiting, dear Romuald, and thou mayst well have thought that I had forgotten thee. But I have come from a long distance and from a place from which no one has ever before returned; there is neither moon nor sun in the country from which I come; there is naught but space and shadow; neither road nor path; no ground for the foot, no air for the wing; and yet here I am, for love is stronger than death, and it will end by vanquishing it. Ah! what gloomy faces and what terrible things I have seen in my journeying! What a world of trouble my soul, returned to this earth by the power of my will, has had in finding its body and reinstating itself therein! What mighty efforts I had to put forth before I could raise the stone with which they had covered me! See! the palms of my poor hands are all blistered from it. Kiss them to make them well, dear love! ~ Theophile Gautier

The song is based on a lot of observation and a lot of speculation. But in sort of a pointed way its kind of about Madonna ... I think it was a particular time where I was being bombarded with her image on TV and in magazines and her whole schtick kind of speaks to me in that way ... like she's going through some sort of problem. It seems she's getting a bit desperate. ~ Mike Patton

Criticizing a person's ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not. ~ Sam Harris

In his anti-Darwinian book ... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe ), Francis Hitching tells the story ... "The need to survive by reaching ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation." Hitching is quite correct, but he rebuts a fairy story that Darwin was far too smart to tell - even though the tale later entered our high school texts as a "classic case" nonetheless. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Reverend Don Marxhausen disagreed with all the riffs on Satan. He saw two boys with hate in their eyes and assault weapons in their hands. He saw a society that needed to figure out how and why - fast. Blaming Satan was just letting them off easy, he felt, and copping out on our responsibility to investigate. The "end of days" fantasy was even more infuriating. ~ Dave Cullen

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 Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. He is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us. ~ Brennan Manning

From the dawn of exact knowledge to the present day, observation, experiment, and speculation have gone hand in hand; and, whenever science has halted or strayed from the right path, it has been, either because its votaries have been content with mere unverified or unverifiable speculation (and this is the commonest case, because observation and experiment are hard work, while speculation is amusing); or it has been, because the accumulation of details of observation has for a time excluded speculation. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley