Heaven

Heaven may refer to the physical heavens, the sky, the seemingly endless expanse of the universe beyond, or to otherworldly realms, often in an "afterlife plane" of existence, attested to in various religions or spiritual philosophies. This is often described as the holiest possible place, accessible by people according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith or awareness.

• I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
  • Isaac Asimov as quoted in Philosophy on the Go (2007) by Joey Green, p. 222

• Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.
  • Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970).

• I cannot be content with less than heaven;
  Living, and comprehensive of all life.
  Thee, universal heaven, celestial all;
  Thee, sacred seat of intellective time;
  Field of the soul's best wisdom: home of truth,
  Star-throned.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1903).

• If our Creator has so bountifully provided for our existence here, which is but momentary, and for our temporal wants, which will soon be forgotten, how much more must He have done for our enjoyment in the everlasting world?
  • Hosea Ballou, as quoted in Biography of Rev. Hosea Ballou (1854) p. 261.

• “The point is: what happens in heaven?”
  “Unknowable wonderfulness?”
  “Nonsense. The answer is nothing. Nothing can happen because if something happens, in fact if something can happen, then it doesn’t represent eternity. Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change.”
  “Have you always thought that?”
  “If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual’s circumstances—and that must incluust have death.”
  “There are those de at least the possibility that they alter for the worse—then you don’t have life after death; you jwho believe that after death the soul is recreated into another being.”
  “That is conservative and a little stupid, certainly, but not actually idiotic.”
  “And there are those who believe that, upon death, the soul is allowed to create its own universe.”
  “Monomaniacal and laughable as well as provably wrong.”
  “There there are those who believe that the soul—”
  “Well, there are all sorts of different beliefs. However, the ones that interest me are those concerning the idea of heaven. That’s the idiocy it annoys me that others cannot see.”
  • Iain Banks, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 11

• Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul. "The kingdom of God is within you."
  • Henry Ward Beecher, Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher.

• There was no pain when I awoke,
  No pain at all. Rest, like a goad,
  Spurred my eyes open — and light broke
  Upon them like a million swords:
  And she was there. There are no words.

  Heaven is for a moment's span.
  And ever.

  • Stephen Vincent Benét, in "The Quality of Courage", in Young Adventure (1918).

• HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• A robin redbreast in a cage
  Puts all Heaven in a rage.
  • William Blake in Auguries of Innocence (c. 1803).

• To see a World in a Grain of Sand
  And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
  Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
  And Eternity in an hour.
  • William Blake in Auguries of Innocence (c. 1803).

• The vision of Christ that thou dost see
  Is my vision's greatest enemy.
  Thine has a great hook nose like thine;
  Mine has a snub nose like to mine.
  Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;
  Mine speaks in parables to the blind.
  Thine loves the same world that mine hates;
  Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.
  • William Blake, in The Everlasting Gospel (c. 1818)

• (Devachan is) the “land of gods” literally; a condition, a state of mental bliss. Philosophically a mental condition analogous to, but far more vivid and real than, the most vivid dream. It is the state after death of most mortals.
  • H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy (1889)

• Let heaven exist, though my own place may be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification.
  • Jorge Luis Borges, in "The Library of Babel" (1941).

• Ah well. Heaven is a state of mind. I knew that now.
  • David Brin, Kiln People (2002), Chapter 74 (ISBN 0-765-34261-8, p. 566)

• No coward soul is mine,
  No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
  I see Heaven's glories shine,
  And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
  • Emily Brontë in "No Coward Soul Is Mine" (1848).

• Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven; because if you do not give yourself in sympathy to goodness, goodness cannot give itself in influence to you.
  • Phillips Brooks, in "The Gift And Its Return" in Sermons (1883), p. 275.

• God’s in His heaven—

All’s right with the world!

• Pippa Passes by Robert Browning

• All places are distant from heaven alike.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II, Section III. Memb. 4.

• In hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto I (1812), Stanza 20.

• When we come to a comparison of heaven and earth, then we may indeed not only forget all about the present life, but even despise and scorn it.
  • John Calvin Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, pg. 74.

• All the way to Heaven is heaven because He said,"'I am the Way."
  • St. Catherine of Siena, as quoted in My God and My All: The Life of St. Francis of Assisi (1959) by Elizabeth Goudge, p. 107.

• It's Christmas in Heaven
  The snow falls from the sky
  But it's nice and warm, and everyone
  Looks smart and wears a tie

It's Christmas in Heaven
There's great films on TV
'The sound of music' twice an hour
And 'Jaws' one, two, and three

There's gifts for all the family
There's toiletries and trains
There's Sony Walkman headphone sets
And the latest video games

• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, written by music by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin; music by John Du Prez

• When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers,

The moon and the stars that you have prepared,

What is mortal man that you keep him in mind,

And a son of man that you take care of him?

• David, Psalms 8: 3-4

• Howling is the noise of hell, singing the voice of heaven; sadness the damp of hell, rejoicing the serenity of heaven. And he that hath not this joy here, lacks one of the best pieces of his evidence for the joys of heaven; and hath neglected or refused that earnest, by which God uses to bind his bargain, that true joy in this world shall flow into the joy of heaven, as a river flows into the sea; this joy shall not be put out in death, and a new joy kindled in me in heaven; but as my soul, as soon as it is out of my body, is in heaven, and does not stay for the possession of heaven, nor for the fruition of the sight of God, till it be ascended through air, and lire, and moon, and sun, and planets and firmament, to that place which we conceive to be heaven, but without the thousandth part of a minute's stop, as soon as it issues, is in a glorious light, which is heaven, (for all the way to heaven is heaven; and as those angels, which came from heaven hither, bring heaven with them, and are in heaven here, so that soul that goes to heaven, meets heaven here ; and as those angels do not divest heaven by coming, so these souls invest heaven, in their going.) As my soul shall not go towards heaven, but go by heaven to heaven, to the heaven of heavens, so the true joy of a good soul in this world is the very joy of heaven
  • John Donne in Sermon LXVI in The Works of John Donne: With a Memoir of His Life (1839) edited by Henry Alford, p. 177.

• While the wish of many individuals is to arrive at heaven, we daily behold them on the way to hell.
  • Reverend William Scott Downey (1854): Proverbs (6th Edition), Chapter IV, Page 20. Boston: J.M. Hewes (printer). Archived from the original at Google Books 1 on June 29, 2023. Archived from the original at Google Books 2 on June 29, 2023.

• There’s heaven on earth. It just happens to be in the ocean.
  • Sylvia Earle Interview (2018)

• He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
  • Jim Elliot, The Journals of Jim Elliot (28 October 1949).

• Buffy: I was happy. Wherever I was... I was happy... at peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time... didn't mean anything. Nothing had form. But I was still me, you know? And I was warm. And I was loved. And I was finished. Complete. I - I don't understand theology or dimensions, any of it really... but I think I was in heaven. And now I'm not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out, by my friends. Everything here is hard and bright and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch. This is Hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that. Knowing what I've lost. They can never know. Never.

• Jane Espenson, After Life (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), October 9, 2001

• Grace respects the gifts of nature, adds to their power and value by purifying, elevating and bringing them to completion. The world of spirits and glorified bodies will be no less glowingly varied, contrasted, individual in its members than this earth and its inhabitants. There you will see every man as God created him, with his own special qualities fixed in their perfection: to the great surprise, no doubt, of those simple, harmless folk who smile superiorly and fear that heaven would bore them.
  • Henri Gheon, The Secret of St John Bosco, translated by F. J. Sheed (London: Sheed and Ward, 1935), Foreword, p. 8.

• Heaven is the day of which grace is the dawn; the rich, ripe fruit of which grace is the lovely flower; the inner shrine of that most glorious temple to which grace forms the approach and outer court.
  • Thomas Guthrie, Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints (1859), p. 22.

• Well, now, like I told that other fellow, I ain't going to set foot in heaven without rip.
  • Mr. Simpson, The Hunt written by Earl Hamner, Jr.

• Nothing is further than Earth from Heaven: nothing is nearer than Heaven to Earth.
  • Julius Charles Hare, in Julius Charles Hare and Augustus William Hare, Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan and Co., 1871), p. 563.

• He who seldom thinks of heaven is not likely to get thither; as the only way to hit the mark is to keep the eye fixed upon it.
  • Bishop Horne, Aphorisms and Opinions of Dr. George Horne 1857, p. 39.

• Phil When I die I'll go to heaven, cause I've spent my time in hell. Grenada, '83 .
  • Richard Ferguson-Hull, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law

• Going back to more ancient times, the four pillars were broken; the nine provinces were in tatters. Heaven did not completely cover [the earth]; Earth did not hold up [Heaven] all the way around [its circumference]. Fires blazed out of control and could not be extinguished; water flooded in great expanses and would not recede. Ferocious animals ate blameless people; predatory birds snatched the elderly and the weak. Thereupon, Nüwa smelted together five-colored stones in order to patch up the azure sky, cut off the legs of the great turtle to set them up as the four pillars, killed the black dragon to provide relief for Ji Province, and piled up reeds and cinders to stop the surging waters. The azure sky was patched; the four pillars were set up; the surging waters were drained; the province of Ji was tranquil; crafty vermin died off; blameless people [preserved their] lives.
  • The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han ...An Liu, John S. Major p.224

• For look! I am creating new heavens and a new earth;

And the former things will not be called to mind,

Nor will they come up into the heart.

• Isaiah, 65:17

• The redeemed shall walk there.
  • Isaiah 35:9.

• Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.
  • Andrew Jackson, in a statement shortly before his death, as quoted in Life of Andrew Jackson (1860) by James Parton, p. 679

• Anas said, Allah be well-pleased with him: The Messenger of Allah said, upon him blessings and peace: “The servant in Paradise shall be married with seventy wives.” Someone said, “Messenger of Allah, can he bear it?” He said: “He will be given strength for a hundred.” From Zayd ibn Arqam, Allah be well-pleased with him, when an incredulous Jew or Christian asked the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, “Are you claiming that a man will eat and drink in Paradise??” He replied: “Yes, by the One in Whose hand is my soul, and each of them will be given the strength of a hundred men in his eating, drinking, coitus, and pleasure.”
  • Sifat al-Janna, al-`Uqayli in the Du`afa’, and Musnad of Abu Bakr al-Bazzar

• I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.
  • Jesus, Luke 15:7

• Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and from heaven great signs.
  • Jesus, Luke 21:10-11

• No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.
  • John 3:14

• And war broke out in heaven: Mi′cha·el and his angels battled with the dragon, and the dragon and its angels battled 8 but it did not prevail, neither was a place found for them any longer in heaven. 9 So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him. 10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have come to pass the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ, because the accuser of our brothers has been hurled down, who accuses them day and night before our God!

• Apocalypse or Revelation of John 12:9-12

• From the acorn, quickly sprouting,
  Mighty Tursas, tall and hardy, Grows the oak-tree, tall and stately,
  Pressed compactly all the grasses, From the ground enriched by ashes,
  That the maidens had been raking, Newly raked by water-maidens;
  When a fire within them kindles, Spread the oak-tree's many branches,
  And the flames shot up to heaven, Rounds itself a broad corona,
  Till the windrows burned to ashes, Raises it above the storm-clouds;
  Only ashes now remaining
  Far it stretches out its branches,
  Of the grasses raked together. Stops the white-clouds in their courses,
  In the ashes of the windrows, With its branches hides the sunlight,
  Tender leaves the giant places, With its many leaves, the moonbeams,
  In the leaves he plants an acorn, And the starlight dies in heaven.
  • Kalevala, Rune II. translated by John Martin Crawford (1888).

• Blessed is the pilgrim, who in every place, and at all times of this his banishment in the body, calling upon the holy name of Jesus, calleth to mind his native heavenly land, where his blessed Master, the King of saints and angels, waiteth to receive him. Blessed is the pilgrim who seeketh not an abiding place unto himself in this world; but longeth to be dissolved, and be with Christ in heaven.
  • Thomas à Kempis, Vera Sapientia or True Wisdom.

• Who goes to Deva Chan? The personal Ego of course, but beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego [soul] —the combination of the sixth and seventh principles—which, after the period of unconscious gestation is reborn into the Deva-Chan, is of necessity as innocent and pure as a new-born babe. The fact of his being reborn at all, shows the preponderance of good over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma (of evil) steps aside for the time being to follow him in his future earth-reincarnation, he brings along with him but the Karma of his good deeds, words, and thoughts into this Deva-Chan. Bad is a relative term for us... and the Law of Retribution is the only law that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality—go to the Deva Chan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile, they are rewarded; receive the effects of the causes produced by them. Of course it is a state, one, so to say, of intense selfishness, during which an Ego reaps the reward of his unselfishness on earth. He is completely engrossed in the bliss of all his personal earthly affections, preferences and thoughts, and gathers in the fruit of his meritorious actions. No pain, no grief nor even the shadow of a sorrow comes to darken the bright horizon of his unalloyed happiness: for, it is a state of perpetual "Maya."
  • Koot Hoomi, in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (1923) pp. 100-101

• Most emphatically the Deva-Chan is not solely the heritage of adepts, and most decidedly there is a heaven—if you must use this astro-geographical Christian term—for an immense number of those who have gone before."... For years, decades, centuries and milleniums, often times multiplied by something more. It all depends upon the duration of Karma. Fill with oil Den's little cup and a city Reservoir of water, and lighting both see which bums the longer, the Ego is the wick and Karma the oil: the difference in the quantity of the latter (in the cup and the reservoir) suggesting to you the great difference in the duration of various Karmas. Every effect must be proportionate to the cause. And, as man's terms of incarnate existence bear but a small proportion to his periods of inter-natal existence in the manvantaric cycle, so the good thoughts, words, and deeds of any one of these lives on a globe are causative of effects, the working out of which requires far more time than the evolution of the causes occupied.
  • Koot Hoomi, in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, (1923) p. 106

• If heaven ain't a lot like Detroit, I don't want to go. If heaven ain't a lot like Detroit, I'd just a soon stay home. If they ain't got no 8 Mile like they do in "The D", just send me to hell or Salt Lake City. It would be about the same to me.
  • Uncle Kracker, "Heaven", Double Wide (30 May 2000), Lava Records

• Only by looking up, can we see heaven.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Ethel Churchill (1837), Vol.II, Chapter 32.

• The generous who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.
  • Johann Kaspar Lavater, as quoted in Laconics: or, the Best Words of the Best Authors (1929) by John Timbs.

• Instead of consigning some men to heaven and some to hell, as moderm theology does, it would be more true to say that every man must pass through both the states which are typified by those names. Every man must pass through the astral plane on his way to the heaven world. Every man at the end of his astral life will attain that heaven world, unless he be a person so entirely elementary, so entirely degraded as never yet to have had any unselfish thought or feeling. If that be so, there can indeed be no heaven world for him, because all these selfish desires and feelings belong exclusively to the astral plane, and they will find their result on that plane.
  • Charles Webster Leadbeater, Some Glimpses of Occultism: Ancient and Modern (1903)

• 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.
  • Charles Webster Leadbeater, Some Glimpses of Occultism: Ancient and Modern (1903)

• 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.
  • Charles Webster Leadbeater, Some Glimpses of Occultism: Ancient and Modern (1903)

• Aim at heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither.
  • C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), Book III, Chapter 10 "Hope".

• Sinead was pretty sure heaven was part of the whole God-lie.
  • Meghan McCarron, Swift, Brutal Retaliation in Rich Horton (ed.) The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, p. 130 (Originally published at Tor.com January 4, 2012)
• If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future. So they are spared the guilt and anxiety that so torment human beings and they are full of the sheer joy of living, taking delight not so much in persons or things as in life itself. As long as your happiness is caused or sustained by something or someone outside of you, you are still in the land of the dead. The day you are happy for no reason whatsoever, the day you find yourself taking delight in everything and in nothing, you will know that you have found the land of unending joy called the kingdom.
  • Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love (1995)
• It were a journey like the path to heaven,
  To help you find them.
  • John Milton, Comus (1637), line 302.

• The hasty multitude
  Admiring enter'd, and the work some praise,
  And some the architect: his hand was known
  In heaven by many a tower'd structure high,
  Where scepter'd angels held their residence,
  And sat as princes.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book I, line 730.

• A heaven on earth.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 208.

• The starry cope
  Of heaven.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 992.

• Though in heav'n the trees
  Of life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines
  Yield nectar.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book V, line 426.

• Heaven open'd wide
  Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
  On golden hinges moving.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VII, line 205.

• Had Jesus completed his mission as the Messiah on earth, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth would have been established in his day. The Kingdom of Heaven in heaven would also have been realized at that time, once people of perfect character living in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth had passed into the spirit world as divine spirits. However, because Jesus died on the cross, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth was not realized. The earth never saw the appearance of people who had reached the level of a divine spirit. No one has ever become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven in the spirit world, which was created as the home of divine spirits. Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven in heaven remains empty and incomplete.
  • Sun Myung Moon, The Kingdom of Heaven and Paradise, Divine Principle, 1996, Chapter 5, Section 2.

• Through death Christian's soul goes to—1st. Perfect purity 2dly. Fullness of joy. 3dly. Everlasting freedom. 4thly. Perfect rest. 5thly. Health and fruition. 6thly. Complete security. 7thly. Substantial and eternal good.
  • Hannah More, diary entry (7 January 1798).

• 且吾所以知天之愛民之厚者有矣，曰以磨為日月星辰，以昭道之；制為四時春秋冬夏，以紀綱之；雷降雪霜雨露，以長遂五穀麻絲，使民得而財利之；列為山川谿谷，播賦百事，以臨司民之善否；為王公侯伯，使之賞賢而罰暴；賊金木鳥獸，從事乎五穀麻絲，以為民衣食之財。自古及今，未嘗不有此也。
  • I know Heaven loves men dearly not without reason. Heaven ordered the sun, the moon, and the stars to enlighten and guide them. Heaven ordained the four seasons, Spring, Autumn, Winter, and Summer, to regulate them. Heaven sent down snow, frost, rain, and dew to grow the five grains and flax and silk that so the people could use and enjoy them. Heaven established the hills and rivers, ravines and valleys, and arranged many things to minister to man's good or bring him evil. He appointed the dukes and lords to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked, and to gather metal and wood, birds and beasts, and to engage in cultivating the five grains and flax and silk to provide for the people's food and clothing. This has been so from antiquity to the present.
  • Mozi's Will of Heaven (天志), Chapter 27, Paragraph 6, ca. 5th Century BCE

• The number of levels in Heaven is the number of verses in the Qur'an. Thus, when a reciter of the Qur'an enters into Heaven, it will be said to him: 'Go up one level for every verse that you can recite.' Thus, no one will be in a higher level than the one who has memorized the entire Qur'an.
  • Muhammad, Biharul Anwar, Volume 92, Page 22; note that the Qur'an has 6,236 verses.

• The people of the Qur’an (those who recite and those who memorize the Qur’an) will be in the highest level (in Heaven) from amongst all of the people with the exception of the Prophets and Messengers. Thus, do not seek to degrade the people of the Qur’an, nor take away their rights, for surely they have been given a high rank by Allah.
  • Muhammad Thawabul A’mal, Page 224

• The Prophet said, "Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah's cause). The Prophet said, "A single endeavor (of fighting) in Allah's cause in the afternoon or in the forenoon is better than all the world and whatever is in it. A place in Paradise as small as the bow or lash of one of you is better than all the world and whatever is in it. And if a houri from Paradise appeared to the people of the earth, she would fill the space between Heaven and the Earth with light and pleasant scent and her head cover is better than the world and whatever is in it."
  • Muhammad Narrated Anas bin Malik, in Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 53

• It is a nice place, actually, one of those infinitely rare situations where one is rewarded commensurately to one’s efforts. Surely that is Heaven by any man’s definition?
  • Larry Niven & Steven Barnes, Dream Park (1981), chapter 19

• Have you been wondering just where we are? After all, theologians have debated for centuries over the exact location of Heaven. Some have said that Heaven can be found beyond the stars. Some say it exists in the heart of Man, and others claim that it does not exist at all, that God is dead, or at least unemployed.
  • Larry Niven & Steven Barnes, Dream Park (1981), chapter 19

• Stan: What purpose does school have? The Bible says the only goal in this life is to praise God and get into heaven.
  • South Park/Season 4 Probably written by Trey Parker, July 26, 2000

• The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament showeth his handywork.
  • Psalms 19:1.

• Each time we sleep with a Houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [i.e. Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetizing vaginas.
  • Al-Itqan fi Ulum al-Qur'an, p. 351

• And in the earth are signs for those who are sure, And in yourselves do you not see? And in the heavens is your sustenance and that which you are promised. So by the Lord of the heavens and the earth! it is surely the truth, just as you speak.
  • Quran 51:20-23

• Who would want to be trapped in a house with an indomitable telepathic despot and have to guard your thoughts –or be voluntarily mindless- and endure that existence forever and ever?
  • Aron Ra, "Fukkenuckabee", Patheos (December 21, 2012)

• Judas: All your followers are blind
  Too much Heaven on their minds
  It was beautiful but now it's sour
  Yes, it's all, all gone sour.

• Jesus Christ Superstar, lyrics by Tim Rice (1970)

• To everything (turn, turn, turn)
  There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
  And a time for every purpose under heaven.
  • Pete Seeger, in "Turn! Turn! Turn!" (1954).

• Heaven's face doth glow.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 4, line 48.

• Sure he's not in hell; he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act II, scene 3, line 8. Richard II, Act IV, scene 1, line 104.

• Were it not good your grace could fly to heaven?
  The treasury of everlasting joy.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II (c. 1590-91), Act II, scene 1, line 17.

• And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
  That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
  If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
  For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
  To him that did but yesterday suspire,
  There was not such a gracious creature born.
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act III, scene 4, line 76.

• There's husbandry in heaven;
  Their candles are all out.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act II, scene 1, line 5.

• Well, God's above all; and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act II, scene 3, line 105.

• All places that the eye of heaven visits,
  Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act I, scene 3, line 275.

• For the selfsame heaven
  That frowns on me looks sadly upon him.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act V, scene 3, line 285.

• But now what about the person who was so avid to judge, to vent his resentment, his powerless indignation, upon someone else without really knowing anything about what he was judging; what if in eternity he discovers, and is compelled to admit, that the person he judged was not only to be excused but that he was a most noble, unselfish, and magnanimous person! It has been said that some day in eternity we (hoping, alas, that we ourselves will not be excluded) shall with amazement miss this one and that one whom we had definitely expected to find there; but will we not with amazement also see that one and that one whom we would have summarily excluded and see that he was far better than we ourselves, not as if he had become that later, but precisely in that which made the judger decide to exclude him. Yet the person who loves believes all things. With the blessed joy of amazement, he will someday see that he was right; and if he made a mistake by believing too much of the good-to believe the good is itself a blessing. Lovingly to believe the good is certainly no defect-but then one does not make a mistake by it either. Mistrustingly to believe nothing at all (which is entirely different from knowledge about the equilibrium of opposite possibilities) and lovingly to believe all things are not a cognition, nor a cognitive conclusion, but a choice that occurs when knowledge has placed the opposite possibilities in equilibrium; and in this choice, which, to be sure, is in the form of a judgment of others, the one judging will be disclosed.
  • Soren Kierkegaard Works of Love, 1847, Hong 1995 p. 234

• Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.
  • George Bernard Shaw, A Treatise On Parents And Children (1910).

• But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built!
  • Solomon, 2 Chronicles 6:18, NWT

• Heaven's not a place that you go when you die, it's that moment in life when you actually feel alive
  • The Spill Canvas in "The Tide".

• All in heaven take joy in sharing their delights and blessings with others.
  • Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell #399.

• It was mentioned by Daraj Ibn Abi Hatim, that Abu al-Haytham 'Adullah Ibn Wahb narrated from Abu Sa'id al-Khudhri, who heard the Prophet Muhammad PBUH saying, 'The smallest reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and seventy-two houri, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby, as wide as the distance from al-Jabiyyah to San'a.
  • Al-Tirmidhi, Vol. 4, Ch. 21, No. 2687

• Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die.
  • Peter Tosh, in the song "Equal Rights".

• Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arch'd As princes' palaces; they that enter there, Must go upon their knees.
  • John Webster, The Dutchess of Malfi act IV, scene II.

• The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.
  • George Washington, First Inaugural Address, (30 April 1789).

• Thomas Daggett: Some people lose their faith because Heaven shows them too little. But how many people lose their faith because Heaven showed them too much?
  • Gregory Widen, The Prophecy

• If Christians have the monopoly of salvation, over whom will they rule? And how will this promise be fulfilled, that to faithful servants is given the authority over five or ten cities (Luke 19:17-19)? It is no fun to be king over empty towns. So they will be populated by those who have not been faithful servants. We Christians will be in the heavenly Jerusalem, but there will also be nations walking in its light (Revelation 21:24). The leaves of the tree of life will serve for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2), which means that there will be in the life beyond people who need a cure for their souls.
  • Richard Wurmbrand, If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972).

• 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.' "
  • Sunan Ibn Majah, Zuhd (Book of Abstinence) 39

• Certainly heaven is something we all need, however, we should not imagine it anthropomorphically. [...] I believe that we certainly cannot rule out the possibility of an existence outside of space and time, mass, energies and charges. In heaven there can be anything but that.
  • Antonino Zichichi. Quoted in Carlo Passarello, La "prima volta" di Zichichi e all'Ars si parla di Archimede, LiveSicilia.it (February 7, 2013)

• Blessings
• Bliss
• Death
• Hell
• Kingdom of God
• Nirvana
• Reincarnation

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• Sky - versus Heaven