Hell

"Our religious friends argue much about heaven and hell and are terribly afraid of the latter indeed it would sometimes almost seem as though they were afraid of the former as well, from the manner in which they exert themselves to avoid going there. In the future no questions or disputes about these conditions will be possible, because man will see for himself that there is no hell, though he will also see very clearly that those who live an evil life are by that fact storing up for themselves very undesirable results and a very unpleasant time in the astral life. The glories of the heaven world will also be open to his sight, and he will realize that man needs only a development of faculty in order to place him at once, here and now, in the midst of all the bliss that that wondrous life can give."

"Imagine there's no heaven It's easy if you try. No hell below us Above us only sky."

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.'"

"Wer anders lehret, denn ich hierinn gelehret hab, oder mich darinn verdammt, der verdamt Gott, und muß ein Kind der Höllen bleiben."

"Why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to Hell?"

"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Serv'd 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."

"Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor, one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where if I be still the same"

"Long is the way And hard, that out of hell leads up to light."

"So frowned the mighty combatants that Hell Grew darker at their frown."

"On a sudden open fly With impetuous recoil and jarring sound Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder."

"The Hell within him; for within him Hell He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell One step, no more than from himself, can fly By change of place."

"Myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep, Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide; To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."

"All hell broke loose."

"The gates that now Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame Far into Chaos, since the fiend pass'd through."

"He [Jesus] would never have said, "Until thou payest the uttermost farthing," (Matthew 5:26) unless it had been possible for us to be freed from our sins through having atoned for them by paying the penalty; neither would He have said, "he shall be beaten with many stripes," or "he shall be beaten with few stripes," (Luke 12:47-48) unless it were that the penalties, being meted out according to the sins, should finally come to an end."

"It is not God who decides whether a person's spirit enters heaven or hell upon his death; it is decided by the spirit himself. Humans are created so that once they reach perfection they will fully breathe the love of God. Those who committed sinful deeds while on earth become crippled spirits who are incapable of fully breathing in the love of God. They find it agonizing to stand before God, the center of true love. Of their own will, they choose to dwell in hell, far removed from the love of God."

"Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: A woman was punished because she had kept a cat tied until it died, and (as a punishment of this offence) she was thrown into Hell. She had not provided it with food or drink, and had not freed her so that she could eat the insects of the earth."

"Nobody, I think has actually said, “The Kingdom of hell is within you”—perhaps because it is so obviously true that it does not need saying."

"Richard Dawkins: What did they tell you about it? I mean, what happens in Hell? Jill Mytton: It's strange, isn't it? After all this time, it still has the power to affect me when you ask me that question. Hell is a fearful place. It is complete rejection by God. It is complete judgment. There is real fire. There is real torment, real torture. And it goes on forever, so there is no respite from it."

"Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity."

"Stan: We're goin' to church. We've sinned and so we have to confess again. Butters: Uh us too. Uh we saw a picture of a naked lady. We could see her whole beaver. Clyde: Yeah. If we died right now, we'd have unclean souls and we'd burn in hell. Butters: I mean, poor Timmy's gonna go to hell! He can't confess his sins, 'cause all he can say is his name!"

"Hell Director: Hello, newcomers, and welcome. Can everybody hear me? Hello? Can everyb--? Okay. Uh, I'm the hell director. Uh, it looks like we have about 8,615 of you newbies today, and for those of you who are a little confused, uh, you are dead, and this is hell, so, abandon all hope and uh yada yada yada. Uh, we are now going to start the orientation process, which will last about-- Man 4: Hey, wait a minute, I shouldn't be here. I was a totally strict and devout Protestant! I thought we went to heaven! Hell Director: Yes, well I'm afraid you were wrong. Soldier: I was a practicing Jehovah's Witness. Hell Director: Uh, you picked the wrong religion as well. Man 5: Well, who was right? Who gets into heaven? Hell Director: I'm afraid it was the Mormons. Yes, the Mormons were the correct answer. Crowd: Awww. Hell Director: So now I'd like to quickly introduce your new ruler and master for eternity, Satan."

"More to the point, what was the lesson that the first Christians drew from the crucifixion? Today such a barbarity might galvanize people into opposing brutal regimes, or demanding that such torture never again be inflicted on a living creature. But those weren’t the lessons the early Christians drew at all. No, the execution of Jesus is The Good News, a necessary step in the most wonderful episode in history. In allowing the crucifixion to take place, God did the world an incalculable favor. Though infinitely powerful, compassionate, and wise, he could think of no other way to reprieve humanity from punishment for its sins (in particular, for the sin of being descended from a couple who had disobeyed him) than to allow an innocent man (his son no less) to be impaled through the limbs and slowly suffocate in agony. By acknowledging that this sadistic murder was a gift of divine mercy, people could earn eternal life. And if they failed to see the logic in all this, their flesh would be seared by fire for all eternity. According to this way of thinking, death by torture is not an unthinkable horror; it has a bright side. It is a route to salvation, a part of the divine plan. Like Jesus, the early Christian saints found a place next to God by being tortured to death in ingenious ways. For more than a millennium, Christian martyrologies described these torments with pornographic relish."

"The early Christians also extolled torture as just deserts for the sinful. Most people have heard of the seven deadly sins, standardized by Pope Gregory I in 590 CE. Fewer people know about the punishment in hell that was reserved for those who commit them: "Pride: Broken on the wheel. Envy: Put in freezing water. Gluttony: Force-fed rats, toads, and snakes. Lust: Smothered in fire and brimstone. Anger: Dismembered alive. Greed: Put in cauldrons of boiling oil. Sloth: Thrown in snake pits." The duration of these sentences, of course, was infinite. By sanctifying cruelty, early Christianity set a precedent for more than a millennium of systematic torture in Christian Europe. If you understand the expressions to burn at the stake, to hold his feet to the fire, to break a butterfly on the wheel, to be racked with pain, to be drawn and quartered, to disembowel, to flay, to press, the thumbscrew, the garrote, a slow burn, and the iron maiden (a hollow hinged statue lined with nails, later taken as the name of a heavy-metal rock band), you are familiar with a fraction of the ways that heretics were brutalized during the Middle Ages and early modern period."

"To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, Who never mentions hell to ears polite."

"Someone says that "after passing into the Subtle World, man does not find the hell which he so dreaded before leaving the Earth." It would be necessary to add the adjective "average" before the word "man." Verily, hell does exist. In the Subtle World, not only do criminals suffer terribly, but also those who have permitted in themselves spiritual deterioration, or who are full of any kind of lust. This is taught in the scriptures of all peoples."

"The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell."

"You will find that in the Gospels Christ said: 'Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?' That was said to people who did not like His preaching. … Then Christ says: 'The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth'; and He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. … Then you all, of course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming to divide the sheep and the goats He is going to say to the goats: 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.' He continues: 'And these shall go away into everlasting fire.' Then He says again: 'If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.' He repeats that again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty."

"I do my own penance for my own sins. What do you say, huh? Ah, it's all bullshit except the pain, right? The pain of hell, the burn from a lighted match increased a million times. Infinite, and you don't fuck around with the infinite. There's no way you do that. The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand, the kind you can feel in your heart. Your soul, the spiritual side, and you know the worst of the two is the spiritual."

"Worry about your own fortunes, gentlemen. The deepest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers, and mutineers.""You know nothing of Hell."

"Black is the badge of hell, The hue of dungeons and the suit of night."

"I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire."

"You, mistress, That have the office opposite to Saint Peter, And keeps the gate of hell!"

"Now the devil that told me I did well Says that this deed is chronicled in hell."

"Hell is empty, And all the devils are here."

"Azrael: Human, have you ever been to Hell? I think not. I'd rather not exist than go back to that."

"There are countless circles of hell; Believers never penetrate the ninth circle."

"Even to the wicked He stretches forth in His compassion. His divine cloud hovers over all that is His; it drips dew even on that fire of punishment so that, of His mercy, it enables even the embittered to taste of the drops of its refreshment."

"He is going to manifest some wonderful outcome, a matter of immense and ineffable compassion on the part of the glorious Creator, with respect to the ordering of this difficult matter of Gehenna’s torment: out of it the wealth of His love and power and wisdom will become known all the more—and so will the insistent might of the waves of His goodness."

"Repeating pain, why? It's all the same, same. I hate this place, stuck in this paradigm. Don't believe in paradise, this must be what Hell is like."

"Seth: I know why you lost your faith. How could true holiness exist if your wife can be taken away from you and your children? Now, I always said God can kiss my fuckin' ass. Well, I changed my lifetime tune about thirty minutes ago' cause I know, without a doubt, what's out there trying to get in here is pure evil straight from hell. And if there is a hell, and those monsters are from it, there's got to be a heaven. Now which are you, a faithless preacher or a mean, mother fuckin' servant of God?"

"“Pretty damn soon, the Rebs’ll pack it in here, too, I expect,” Carlton said. “Every blasphemy that passes your lips means a hotter dose of hellfire in the world to come,” McSweeney answered.” I’ve seen enough hellfire right here on earth,” Carlton said. “The kind of the preachers go on about don’t worry me as much as it used to.”"

"[J]ust send me to hell or Salt Lake City; it would be about the same to me."

"Facilis descensus Averno; Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis; Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est."

"Quisque suos patimur manis. Each of us bears his own Hell."

"In the throat Of Hell, before the very vestibule Of opening Orcus, sit Remorse and Grief, And pale Disease, and sad Old Age and Fear, And Hunger that persuades to crime, and Want: Forms terrible to see. Suffering and Death Inhabit here, and Death's own brother Sleep; And the mind's evil lusts and deadly War, Lie at the threshold, and the iron beds Of the Eumenides; and Discord wild Her viper-locks with bloody fillets bound."

"Do you know what Hell really is, Thomas? It's not lakes of burning oil or chains of ice. It's being removed from God's sight, of having His word taken from you. It's hard to believe, Thomas, so hard. I know that better than anyone."

"MARIA: Hell? Is he talking about hell? Good. For a moment I was afraid he was making sense."

"Abu Umama narrated: "The Messenger of God said, 'Everyone that God admits into paradise will be married to 72 wives; two of them are houris and seventy of his inheritance of the [female] dwellers of hell. All of them will have libidinous sex organs and he will have an ever-erect penis.' ""

"Curiosis fabricavit inferos."