Quotes About Hell

What a folly is it now, he instantly resumed, leaving the general and attacking a particular, to think to make people good by promises and threats--promises of a heaven that would bore the dullest among them to death, and threats of a hell the very idea of which, if only half conceived, would be enough to paralyse every nerve of healthy action in the human system!

Never seeking true or high things, caring only for appearances, and, therefore, for inventions, he had left his imagination all undeveloped, and when it represented his own inner condition to him, had repressed it until it was nearly destroyed, and what remained of it was set on fire of hell.

At the heart of Vonnegut's voice is a humility my earnest young self didn't feel comfortable with: In it, I heard evidence of real humiliation. War really was hell, with hell being the place where whatever you normally counted on or leaned on was taken from you, absolutely. Bill Pilgrim is a skinny virginal dork, and when he gets to war, war leaps on his skinny dorkitude and devastates him unglamorously, and haunts him ever after.

When sunset, like a crimson throat to hell, is cavernous... ("A Wine of Wizardry")

Eskimo: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? Priest: No, not if you did not know. Eskimo: Then why did you tell me? Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

There are two people in the waiting room. One is an extremely thin old man, a retired teacher of French who still gives tuition by correspondence, and who whilst waiting his turn is correcting a pile of scripts with a pencil sharpened to a fine point. On the script he is about to examine, the essay title can be read: In Hell, Raskolnikov meets Meursault ("The Outsider"). Imagine a dialogue between them using material from both novels.

A worker's paradise is a consumer's hell.

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

Body and soul can never be married I need to become who I already am and will bellow forever at this incongruity which has committed me to hell

Hell is the moment you realize that you were ignorant of the fact, when it was true, that you were not yet ruined by desire.

One time, two years ago, I took a draught of morphia, meaning to end my life. My mother found me before the life was ended, the doctor drew the poison from my stomach with a syringe, and when I woke, it was to the sound of my own weeping. For I had hoped to open my eyes on Heaven, where my father was; and they had only pulled me back to Hell.

one night i saw the black widow crawling on my bed and the fear coursing through my veins felt like the best kind of hell

The gods spit on those without honor, you know! It'll be a cold hell, and a dark one, for you!" "I'm chock-full of honor, sir. Got lots of it. Keep it right here between my empty stomach and my puckered white ass, which you may kiss, by the way.

Learn from everyone. Follow no one. Watch for patterns. Work like hell.

this oväder—this un-weather—was of the Devil's making; that the fumes of Hell warmed the world of Man, and soon the armies of God would strike from the Gates of Heaven to set the balance right.

Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed offerings to idols, swore oaths that the killer of souls might come to their aid and save the people. That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.

That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.

How in heck are they handling their surplus population in Hell these days? Maybe by the time you and I are in the queue there won't be room for us.

Hell is the bloodcurdling mansion of time, in whose profoundest circle Satan himself waits, winding a gargantuan watch in his hand.

It's great the way the old-time directors used to manipulate the hell out of you. You see someone dying and all of a sudden a ghost would come out and they go walking hand in hand up the stairway.

I've watched my duty, straight an' true, an' tried to do it well; Part of the time kept heaven in view, An' part steered clear of hell.

Each place has its own advantages - heaven for the climate, and hell for the society.

This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there! - Letter to J. H. Twichell, 1/29/1901

The first time the Deity came down to earth, he brought life and death; when he came the second time, he brought hell.