Heaven And Hell Quotes

I didn't join films to become a great star. I wanted a change from my mother's memory. I started believing in God after my mother's death because then there is heaven and hell and I might meet her there. I think of her as a star.She is a solid point of reference in my life. And I figure if I'm in films, if I'm 70mm, it is easier for her to see me. ~ Shah Rukh Khan

I know for a fact that Heaven and Hell are here on Earth. ~ Marianne Faithfull

Luca saw her bloodstained hands as the clerk bound them with a rope, and Luca realized that she was a thing of horror, a beautiful thing of horror, the worst thing between heaven and hell: a fallen angel. ~ Philippa Gregory

I shall tell you about God once you've reached your imaginary heaven. Then, give me a call. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Preach with authority. The authority for us is the Word of God. Preach with simplicity ... Preach with urgency ... heaven and hell are at stake. Preach for a decision. ~ Billy Graham

Not all demons are born to the dark. And not all angels seek the light. Sometimes our circumstance demands a fusion of both. There is no good and evil. Only the time spent between both heaven and hell, where we find our peace. And love. Even the vilest of monsters deserve to be loved. ~ Trisha Wolfe

Once you have started seeing the beauty of life, ugliness starts disappearing. If you start looking at life with joy, sadness starts disappearing. You cannot have heaven and hell together, you can have only one. It is your choice. ~ Rajneesh

Unhealthy gossiping is one way that divides heaven and hell. ~ Deeksha Mittal

An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents. ~ Alec Guinness

The Clochemerle 1929 was a magnificent wine. Drinking it in small sips, his grace the Archbishop felt himself well disposed towards the Clochemerlins. It takes all sorts to make a world and a Church, to people Heaven and Hell. But there was no denying that it took capable vignerons to make a wine like this, men whose minds must on no account be distracted by excessive metaphysical cares. ~ Gabriel Chevallier

Life is short and if you're looking for extension, you had best do well. 'Cause there's good deeds and then there's good intentions. They are as far apart as Heaven and Hell. ~ Ben Harper

When we die, it's not the angels in heaven that need our help. It's the angels in hell. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

While guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might. We were seeking an art based on fundamentals, to cure the madness of the age, and find a new order of things that would restore the balance between heaven and hell. ~ Hans Arp

Please know that I never make any judgments about who's going to heaven and hell. That's the Almighty's job. My job is to love Him, love you, share the Good News, and then move on down the road. ~ Phil Robertson

O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple Hell? ~ William Shakespeare

There is much I do not understand about the way humans think of punishment and forgiveness, and what happens to sinners when they die. I wish Jessamine was here to explain it to me, for the plants do not speak of heaven and hell. They speak only of the turning of the seasons and of starting anew each spring. Never despair, they counsel, for the orchard that is barren one season may bear fruit in plenty in the next. ~ Maryrose Wood

You have been to hell, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he's been there.
What's it like in hell?"
Same like in heaven," he said.
He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."
He said. "To up, to down
all same, at end."
I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below.
I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"
Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.
Same-same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy in journey."
I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is.. "
Love, too," he said.
Ketut laughed again, "Always so difficult for young people to understand this! ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either. ~ Milan Kundera

In heaven, believers in Jesus Christ will never cry again. In hell, unbelievers will never stop crying. What more motivation do we need to share Christ with the lost? ~ Brian Williams

In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

There are those who say that heaven and hell are not so far apart. They are not at opposite ends of the world beyond ours, only a step away from one another. ~ Alice Hoffman

THIS WORLD IS FULL OF KINGS AND QUEENS WHO'LL BLIND YOUR EYES AND STEAL YOUR DREAMS. IT'S HEAVEN AND HELL. ,,/ ,,/ ~ Ronnie James Dio

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. ~ Thomas A. Edison

There is no boundary between heaven and earth unless we believe in one. ~ Leland Dirks

I thought, gazing at the beauty of the landscape again, it is as though the fiend has prevailed against the angels, and fixed his throne in a heaven, to rule it as though it were Hell. ~ Tom Holland

Do you remember bedtime as a child? I was terrified of the dark. I was terrified of the closed closet door that surely cracked open when I wasn't looking and spewed out ghouls and devils. I took care that no arms or legs protruded from the bed. I sometimes slept with the covers over my head. Sweltering, panting, barely breathing. Not even my hair exposed, lest a monster discover and devour me. I remember begging my father to check under the bed. I remember trying to explain how some monsters had invisibility cloaks. He would kiss my cheek and switch off the light.

We stop looking under the bed once we realize that the monsters are inside us.

It's funny how they transform. Suddenly they don't mind daylight. Suddenly they dress nicely, speak our language, and share our customs. They sit next to us on the metro and jog around our neighborhoods. They slip things into our drinks at parties and offer us jobs. Sometimes we spot them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we even do the unthinkable: we invite them to our bed. As adults, we burn down the sanctuaries we created as children. Our inner child freaks out, but its screams are drowned by our moans as our monsters bring us to orgasm. ~ Angela Panayotopulos

I will never betray my Goon Dock friends, We will stick together until the whole world ends, Through heaven and hell and nuclear war, Good pals like us will stick like tar, In the city, or the country, or the forest, or the boonies I am proudly declared a fellow Goony. - The Goony Oath ~ James Kahn

Dante, I think, committed a crude blunder when, with a terror-inspiring ingenuity, he placed above the gateway of his hell the inscription, 'I too was created by eternal love'
at any rate, there would be more justification for placing above the gateway to the Christian Paradise ... the inscription 'I too was created by eternal hate' ... ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us. This is the great realization of the Upanishads of India in the ninth Century B.C. All the gods, all the heavens, all the world, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other. That is what myth is. Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the organs of the body in conflict with each other. This organ wants this, that organ wants that. The brain is one of the organs. ~ Joseph Campbell

He wanted to know all about me and my family and especially my childhood.

"That's where everything starts," he'd say. "Both heaven and hell. ~ Celeste Albaret

Both heaven and hell are within us. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Here dwells a snake, one thousand miles long
Coiled, one thousand miles deep
Eyes like candy, it has eyes like candy
Hard and blue, but soft as kittens feet
Out of sight or in the element of light
It could be a devil, it could be an angel
With spiders inside a vision from hell
Its spine is a vertical scream
Slow as concrete, blurred as a dream
Fueled by inertia, depth, radius, and velocity,
Its soul
a twisted wreckage of despair and pain
And the spiders inside are just praying for rain
Killing time killing time
And praying for rain
One thousand miles deep ~ James O'Barr

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

Are you sure of that? Baptism into the Christian Faith doesn't ensure one going to Heaven, why should this other sprinkling be a guarantee of anyone going to Hell?' 'It's such a big question, Rex, but briefly it is like this. Heaven and Hell are only symbolical of growth to Light or disintegration to Darkness. By Christian, or any other true religious baptism, we renounce the Devil and all his Works, thereby erecting a barrier which it is difficult for Evil forces to surmount, but anyone who accepts Satanic baptism does exactly the reverse. They wilfully destroy the barrier of Astral Light which is our natural protection and offer themselves as a medium through which the powers of Darkness may operate on mankind. ~ Dennis Wheatley

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today ... ~ John Lennon

The sooner the jihadis go up to their imagined #heaven, the sooner our earth would be a heaven. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

I would already have a body count in the thirties by now, if it had been you. Heaven and hell. That's where I would go for you. ~ Tijan

The real heaven is to live with mature people who believe in love, affection, and friendship; the real hell is to live with immature people who believe in money, power, and sex ~ 'SON Of GOD' P.S.Jagadeesh Kumar

Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you. ~ William Blake

The space center's proximity to my backyard came to signify an intersection between heaven and hell. Florida was somewhere between the two; it was America's phantom limb, a place where spaceships were catapulted out into the cosmos. Alligators emerged from brackish water. Vultures and hawks circled above. Mosquitoes patrolled the atmosphere at eye level. We shared an ocean with sharks and dolphins. There were no seasons, only variations of humidity. Time slithered, festering in a damp wake of recollections.

I believed in the Bermuda Triangle. I thought it would move in over Florida one night. By dusk an unknown force would vaporize us through a tear in the atmosphere. We'd be stuck, wandering in a parallel version of the same place, unaware that we were dead but dreaming.

People came here to vanish. ~ Paul Kwiatkowski

She died believing in the Trinity and Heaven and Hell and all the rest of it. I'm so glad. Why? Because I loved her. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

There was the kind of silence there might have been on the day before Creation.
Adam stood smiling at the two of them, a small figure perfectly poised exactly between Heaven and Hell.
Crowley grabbed Aziraphale's arm. "You know what happened?" he hissed excitedly. "He was left alone! He grew up human! He's not Evil Incarnate or Good Incarnate, he's just...a human incarnate- ~ Neil Gaiman

How much more of the mosque, of prayer and fasting?
Better go drunk and begging round the taverns.
Khayyam, drink wine, for soon this clay of yours
Will make a cup, bowl, one day a jar.
When once you hear the roses are in bloom,
Then is the time, my love, to pour the wine;
Houris and palaces and Heaven and Hell-
These are but fairy-tales, forget them all. ~ Omar Khayyam

It was about people whose mental diseases couldn't be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension, and three-dimensional Earthling doctors couldn't see those causes at all, or even imagine them. One thing Trout said that Rosewater liked very much was that there really were vampires and werewolves and goblins and angels and so on, but that they were in the fourth dimension. So was William Blake, Rosewater's favorite poet, according to Trout. So were heaven and hell. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

There is a vast difference between merely knowing about Christ and actually knowing Him-the difference between heaven and hell. ~ Steven J. Lawson

We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places. ~ John McGahern

Say you want me." His mouth moved over her throat, closed over her aching breast. Every strong pull sent an answering rush of liquid heat.
"You know I do." She pressed him to her, wound a leg around his.
She could barely breathe with her need, clawing at him to get closer, to crawl inside the shelter of his body, his mind, to feel his body in hers, taking possession as he was meant to, to feel his mouth at her breast, dragging her further into his world.
"All of it," he said hoarsely, his fingers probing the nest of tiny curls, stroking, caressing. "Mate with me my way."
She moved in a kind of anguish against his hand. "Yes, Mikhail." She was frantic for release, frantic to relieve him. She was consumed with the same red haze, not separating love from lust or hunger from need. She was on fire, hurting, aching, body and mind, even her soul in torment, not knowing where his wild, uninhibited emotions left off and hers began.
Mikhail lifted her easily with his enormous strength, slid her slowly, erotically down his clenching belly until she was pressed against the broad head of his raging erection. Her heat seared him, beckoned. Raven's arms slid around his neck, her legs around his hips, opening for him. Slowly he lowered her body over his, impaled her on the thick length of fire so that she surrounded him with such a moist, tight sheath he shuddered, somewhere beyond mere pleasure, a kind of erotic heaven and hell.
Her nails dug into his shoulders ~ Christine Feehan

Don't just make a name for yourself on earth; let your name be written in the book of life in Heaven, the seat of the Sovereign God! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Your soul is a seeker, lover and artist; shape-shifting through archetypal energy, between your darkness and fields of light, your body and spirit, your heaven and hell, until you land in the moment of sweet surrender; when you, as a dancer, disappear into the dance. ~ Gabrielle Roth

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell. ~ Marquis De Sade

Mark my words. Someday, somehow, he WILL be back. And upon his return, shake the very foundation of heaven and hell. Irrevocably. Irredeemably. Because that's one bad-ass motherfuckin' bird! ~ John Layman

I don't believe in heaven and hell. I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life - the only thing I know to exist - to be wasted. ~ George Clooney

If Michael, leader of God's host
When Heaven and Hell are met,
Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post
He would his deeds forget. ~ William Butler Yeats

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell. ~ George Orwell

The world is full of kings and queens. Who blinds your eyes, then steals your dreams. It's heaven and hell! ~ Black Sabbath

I will simply die, as you will simply die, when our hearts stop beating. And instead of the fires of Hell or the clouds of Heaven, there will be a chorus of hungry worms or fish, depending on how we go. Isn't that what really terrifies you most of all, why you force yourself against all reason to believe in such tales? It's because you're afraid of the nothingness at the end. You're ashamed of it. ~ Cliff James

HEAVEN AND HELL
When you are away from the Truth, you are in hell. When you are close to the Truth, you are in heaven. ~ Sirshree

Aline," he interrupted tersely, "the forces of heaven and hell combined couldn't stop me from making love to you right now."
That hardly left room for ambiguity. ~ Lisa Kleypas

People expect too much. People who expect heaven always fall into hell - that is the law. Expect heaven and hell is certain. Don't expect heaven and there will never be any hell. ~ Rajneesh

Do not imagine that an integral being has the ambition of enlightening the unaware or raising worldly people to the divine realm. To her, there is no self and other, and hence no one to be raised; no heaven and hell, and hence no destination. ~ Laozi

What we believe about heaven and hell is incredibly important because it exposes what we believe about who God is and what God is like. ~ Rob Bell

Lila's world may believe in Heaven and Hell, but his believed in dust. He was taught early that magic reclaimed magic, and earth reclaimed earth, the two dividing when the body died, the person they had combined to be simply forfeit, lost. Nothing lasted. Nothing remained. Growing ~ V.E Schwab

It took a man capable of an immeasurable amount of understanding to strip away the insecurities I'd felt after learning what I was. It took a man capable of loving me until the end of the world to make me accept myself.
And I would move heaven and hell to keep him.
Always. ~ Keary Taylor

I don't think there's a petty system of heaven and hell. The love of God is much more forgiving. I'm not a believer in a wrathful God at all. ~ Susan Sarandon

He'd never really given religion much thought himself. It was just there, one of the basic fundamentals of life and living; Heaven is generally good and one should aspire to end up there, and Hell is decidedly foul and one should generally direct their enemies there. ~ T.A. Miles

For Jesus, heaven and hell were present realities. Ways of living we can enter into here and now. He talked very little of the life beyond this one ... ~ Rob Bell

Democrtitus, in the fifth century B.C. had declared that all the world was composed of only two elements: atomes and the void. This reduction of the myriad of forms to only two was the ultimate in dualistic reasoning. Christianity adopted dualism when it created the strict division between good and evil and heaven and hell. ~ Leonard Shlain

You listen to Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio in it, and it's not Black Sabbath. They should have just called it 'Heaven and Hell' right from the beginning. Because you listen to that 'Heaven and Hell' album, that doesn't sound anything close to Black Sabbath. ~ Zakk Wylde

Fear, hydra-headed fear, which is rampant in all of us, is a hang-over from lower forms of life. We are straddling two worlds, the one from which we have emerged and the one towards which we are heading. This is the deepest meaning of the word human, that we are a link, a bridge, a promise. It is in us that the life process is being carried to fulfillment. We have a tremendous responsibility, and it is the gravity of that which awakens our fears. We know that if we do not move forward, if we do not realize our potential being, we shall relapse, sputter out, and drag the world down with us. We carry Heaven and Hell within us; we are the cosmogonic builders. We have choice - and all creation is our range.

For some it a terrifying prospect. It would be better, think they, if Heaven were above and Hell below - anywhere outside, but not within. But that comfort has been knocked from under us. There are no places to go to, either for reward or punishment. The place is always here and now, in your own person and according to your own fancy. The world is exactly what you picture it to be, always, every instant. It is impossible to shift the scenery about and pretend that you will enjoy another, a different act. The setting is permanent, changing with the mind and heart, not according to the dictates of an invisible stage director. You are the author, director and actor all in one: the drama is always going to be your own life, not some one else's. A beautiful, terrible, in ~ Henry Miller

There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is. ~ Thomas Carlyle

His throne is the pulpit. He stands in Christ's stead. His message is the Word of God. Around him are immortal souls. The Savior, unseen, is beside him. The Holy Spirit broods over the congregation. Angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations and what vast responsibility! ~ Matthew Simpson

It is more important to find out the truth about oneself than to find out the truth about heaven and hell, or about many other things which are of less importance and are apart from oneself. However, every man's pursuit is according to his state of evolution, and so each soul is in pursuit of something - but he does not know where it leads him. The first sign of realization of truth is tolerance towards others. There are the words of Christ, "In the house of my Father are many mansions", and those of the Prophet, "Each soul has its own religion." This means that according to his evolution so man knows the truth and the more a man knows, the more he finds there is to learn. ~ Inayat Khan

It appears now to be universally admitted that, before the exile, the Israelites had no belief in rewards and punishments after death, nor in anything similar to the Christian heaven and hell; but our story proves that it would be an error to suppose that they did not believe in the continuance of individual existence after death by a ghostly simulacrum of life. Nay, I think it would be very hard to produce conclusive evidence that they disbelieved in immortality; for I am not aware that there is anything to show that they thought the existence of the souls of the dead in Sheol ever came to an end. But they do not seem to have conceived that the condition of the souls in Sheol was in any way affected by their conduct in life. If there was immortality, there was no state of retribution in their theology. Samuel expects Saul and his sons to come to him in Sheol. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

In the absence of light, only darkness is left. ~ Reyna Pryde

A rabbi had a conversation with the Lord about Heaven and Hell. "I will show you Hell," said the Lord, and he led the rabbi into a room containing a large round table. The people sitting around the table were famished and desperate. In the middle of the table was an enormous pot of stew that smelled so delicious that the rabbi's mouth watered. Each person around the table held a spoon with a very long handle. Although the long spoons just reached the pot, their handles were longer than the would-be diners' arms: thus, unable to bring food to their lips, no one could eat. The rabbi saw that their suffering was terrible indeed.


"Now I will show you Heaven," said the Lord, and they went into another room, exactly the same as the first. There was the same large round table, the same pot of stew. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons - but here everyone was well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The rabbi could not understand. "It is simple, but it requires a certain skill," said the Lord. "In this room, you see, they have learned to feed each other. ~ Irving Yalom

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd: 'I Myself am Heav'n and Hell ~ Omar Khayyam

He shook my dozing soul and threw the cold water of reality in my face, so that life and God and heaven and hell broke into my world with glory and horror. (on CS Lewis) ~ John Piper

I am my own heaven and hell! ~ Friedrich Schiller

dan brownThe televangelist began quoting verses from the Bible describing hierarchy of angels, demons, and spirits that ruled in heaven and hell. "Protect your souls from evil forces!" He warned them. "Lift your hearts in prayer! God and his angels will hear you!" He's right, Mal'akh knew. But so will the demons. ~ Dan Brown

Oh sirs, deal with sin as sin, and speak of heaven and hell as they are, and not as if you were in jest. ~ John Flavel

I give you comfort. I give you peace. I give you joy. I give you hope. I give you life."

Jesus kept talking to her.

"I give you strength. I give you love. I give you power. I give you Me."

Jennifer started jumping up and down and hugging Jesus. ~ Sunshine Rodgers

I remember watching Mel Gibson on some show once, and he was being asked about his belief in the afterlife. Gibson said: 'Well, I can't believe this is all there is'. And I thought: 'Wait a minute. You're Mel Gibson. You have millions of dollars. You're a great-looking chap with every conceivable blessing that could be bestowed upon a man. And that's not good enough ?' ~ Hugh Laurie

Blue believes the harmony to be motivated by self-interest. There is a resurgence of faith these days, a growing belief in organized religion, grace, damnation, heaven and hell. People treat each other kindly now, thinks Blue, because they hope to escape God's wrath. Blue does not believe in damnation and has trouble empathizing with those who do. In her fifty-two years, she has found no hard evidence, no scientific proof to convince her of God's existence. She considers herself an atheist. ~ Nick Sagan

90. Look up at heaven and hell in the sky, for the stars are balls of fire suspended there by the angels. ~ Anne Rice

I love you," Jared said. The words tasted bittersweet on his tongue but it was also a relief to be able to say them. He tipped Gabriel's face up and dragged his mouth gently across Gabriel's jaw. "I love you."
Gabriel practically melted into him, tucking his face into the crook of Jared's neck. "I love you more," he whispered, brushing his lips against Jared's throat. A chaste kiss. Chaste words.
But there was nothing chaste about the way kiss body reacted. Jared's heart was hammering in his chest, the familiar mix of want and longing, pain and euphoria coursing through his veins.
Jared closed his eyes and wondered if this was how it felt to be between heaven and hell. ~ Alessandra Hazard

I am not a person of faith. I'm a Catholic. I was brought up Catholic, but I'm not a church-going sort of girl. I'm very spiritual. I pray every night. I believe in Heaven and Hell, but I'm not a person that goes to church, like, every Sunday. ~ Cristina Saralegui

Beyond the earth,
beyond the farthest skies
I try to find Heaven and Hell.
Then I hear a solemn voice that says:
Heaven and hell are inside. ~ Omar Khayyam

... the most devastating thing Finney could have said. Not that Peter was hated by his father. But that he'd been loved all along. He'd interpreted kindness as cruelty, generosity as meanness, support as tethers. How horrible to have been offered love, and to have chosen hate instead. He'd turned heaven into hell. ~ Louise Penny

You go on being reincarnated until you reach the actual Truth. Heaven and Hell are just a state of mind. We are all here to become Christ-like. The actual world is an illusion. ~ George Harrison

It seems to me in a general sense we as a society are enamored with the mystical, mysterious, the unseen & unknown. We are looking for the hidden teaching, the secret scroll or fountain of youth, and of course heaven and hell. ~ Bryan Kest

Harry saw his death as if it was someone else's. He watched himself from outside his body and he wasn't
scared at all ... he found that he could slide between the spaces in the air itself.
Ecstasy touched him. He was stroked by something that felt like trees, cool, green and leafy. It occurred to him that he died, and he got scared. He felt walls like membranes which shivered with pain and a sound, a terrible sound which promised meaningless tortures, like the Christian stories of his youth. He
recognized the world of pleasure and the world of pain. Bliss, punishment,
heaven and hell. ~ Peter Carey

You may never reach that glorious moment until you die, so live life on the edge halfway between heaven and hell ... and let's all dance in the middle in purgatory ~ Lady Gaga

This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hells-that there is nothing to be asked for, desired for, beyond one's spiritual Self (atman). ~ Swami Vivekananda

Heaven for climate, Hell for company. ~ James M. Barrie

Many of us have set out on the path of enlightenment. We long for a release of self-hood in some kind of mystical union with all things. But that moment of epiphany - when we finally see the whole pattern and sense our place in the cosmic web - can be a crushing experience from which we never fully recover. Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. You can not turn away. Your destiny is bound to the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors. To seek enlightenment is to seek annihilation, rebirth, and the taking up of burdens. You must come prepared to touch and be touched by each and every thing in heaven and hell.
I am One with the Universe and it hurts. ~ Andrew Boyd

THOUGHTS
Heaven and hell are not geographic locations. The thoughts that you entertain create heaven or hell. ~ Sirshree

Heaven and Hell. White and black. Good and evil. This was a face-off between light and dark, as stark and true as any war since time immemorial. The ~ Mark Cassell

Somewhere forest fires rage and somewhere else something moves beneath dark waters and somewhere blood appears in the hallway of the home of some old couple who aren't bleeding and somewhere someone else spontaneously self-combusts and somehow all the mysteries of this world as I know it offer me comfort and I don't know beans about heaven and hell and somehow all that stuff is no longer an issue and at the moment I'm a sixteen-foot-tall five-hundred-and-forty-eight-pound man inside this six-foot body and all i can feel is the pressure all I can feel is the pressure and the need for release. ~ David Wojnarowicz

That's the difference between heaven and hell! In hell we starve! In heaven we feed each other! ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. The monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout - I can't waste my time with the likes of you!"
His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled "I could kill you for your impertinence."
"That," the monk calmly replied, "is hell."
Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight.
"And that,"said the monk "is heaven."
The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates's injunction "Know thyself" speaks to the keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one's own feelings as they occur. ~ Daniel Goleman