quotations about Hell
I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Bell Jar
Hell is the incapacity to be other than the creature one finds oneself ordinarily behaving as.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Stories
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place Eternal Justice has prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set,
As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to th' utmost pole.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
When I die I don't want no part of heaven.
I would not do heaven's work well.
I pray the devil comes and takes me
To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Youngstown", The Ghost of Tom Joad
Hell is very likely to be modernization infinitely extended.
TOM STOPPARD
The Invention of Love
The person who disbelieves in Hell doesn't really believe in Heaven either. He believes in oblivion. He desperately hopes that he'll cease to exist after death. He hopes he'll get away with it after all.
DWIGHT LONGENECKER
Adventures in Orthodoxy
One smell of brimstone makes the whole world kin.
GEORGE ADE
"The Fable of How the Canny Commercial Salesman Guessed the Combination", True Bills
Who believes in Hell? Is it a terrible place to which we sinners are condemned? Or is it a place of the imagination, fueled by fears that have built upon the superstitions and religious relics of our society?
S. KAYE SAUNDERS
Hell Exposed
I fear no farther hell than that I feel.
EDWARD YOUNG
Busiris, King of Egypt: A Tragedy
Hell will not be a blot on the universe, but an eternal testimony to the ugliness of evil that will prompt wondrous appreciation of a good God's magnificence. That sounds like nonsense to Hell-hating moderns, but it makes perfect sense when we recognize and hate evil for what it is. We each have our preferred ways of sinning, whether as prostitutes, porn addicts, materialists, gossips, or the self-righteous. We all are sinners who deserve Hell.
RANDY ALCORN
If God Is Good
The greatest misconception about hell is that it doesn't exist. Just as we believe scientists when they tell us there is such a thing as gravity, so should we believe God when he tells us there is such a place as hell. Many people wonder how a merciful and caring God could send people to such a terrible place. The truth is that God doesn't send anyone to hell; people choose to go there by their own rebellion, and God honors their choice.
RONALD A. BEERS & V. GILBERT BEERS
The Complete Book of Life's Questions
Hell doesn't exactly take people to heaven, but the eternal place apart from God sure makes people wonder about heaven. If they're pondering hell, odds are heaven will get some of their attention as well. In that respect, at least the topic of hell could coincide with Judgment Day and serve as a path to heaven.
MICHAEL M. MURRAY
52 Paths to Heaven
Hell was not part of the original creation. Hell is God's fall-back position. Hell is something God was forced to make because people chose to rebel against him and turn against what was best for them and the purpose for which they were created.
LEE STROBEL
The Case for Faith
Hell. It's one of those topics you don't bring up in polite conversation. Yet, according to a 2004 Gallup poll, 70 percent of Americans believe in hell. What exactly they believe about hell is not spelled out, but you can be sure that lots of colorful ideas are out there. Unfortunately many of them originate from urban legends, spittle-spewing "fire and brimstone" preachers, and B-grade horror films (or some unfortunate combination of the three).
SEAN MCDOWELL & JONATHAN MORROW
Is God Just a Human Invention?
In hell, sinners shall forever lay all the blame on their own wills. Hell is a rational torment by conscience.
RICHARD BAXTER
"The People Who Receive the Saints' Rest", The Saints' Everlasting Rest
As Heaven is the object of our deepest desire, Hell is the object of our deepest fear. Our hearts are so deep that we don't even know our deepest desires and fears very clearly. But we do know that these two things match each other: our deepest desire is to be freed from our deepest fear, and our deepest fear is that we fail to attain our deepest desire. So if our deepest desire is to be in a love relationship with God--with infinite understanding, infinite love, and infinite beauty--then our deepest fear is to fail to attain that deepest desire forever, to have no hope of attaining it anymore. That's why in Dante's Inferno the sign over the gate of Hell reads: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
PETER KREEFT
Because God Is Real
My mother once told me she thought hell would be nothing more than being given a glimpse of God--then having it taken away, forever.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
Is Hell supposed to be figuratively interpreted? This debate partly pivots on the different interpretations of words and how they translate through language transitions, for example, from the original language to Greak and Latin. This is a complex debate beyond the scope of this book but I totally agree with the conclusions of most Christian commentators that Jesus taught this doctrine. Even if the "real" Jesus did not teach it, the Jesus Christ of the Bible, the character invented by the gospel writers and the early Church did, and this is the larger than life fantasy figure that has shaped history. We have to define Hell in literal terms because this is being true to the original intentions of the gospel writers. The original intention of the founders was to think of Hell as a cosmic torture chamber with literal torments. They took the belief from their surrounding culture which had absorbed hell-fire notions possibly from Persian Zoroastrianism which propounded a literal belief in Hell and from other sources, among them the Essenes and Pharisees, who at the time of Jesus believed in Hell. Jesus had ample opportunity to condemn the belief that was an accepted part of the theological currency of his era but he chose to adopt it as a keynote ingredient of his central salvation message.
CHARLES SAYER WILSON
Sex and the Devil's Wager
Hell doesn't come looking for humanity since it's a dead energy field, so it is humanity that is looking for hell.
CHANTHA TAN
Humanity Under Siege in the 21st Century and Why?
Hell doesn't exist. Paradise doesn't exist.... they are only subjective dimensions of our minds, crystallized in ether formed by our active thoughts. In these regions our inner sufferings last and multiply.
MAURIZIO CAVALLO
Beyond the Heavens