Descent Into Hell Quotes & Sayings

I do not wish upon anyone a descent into hell. But if your life has to be turned inside out in order for you to know yourself
if the shadow of a shaman crosses your path and you turn and follow it down
I pray that you use its force wisely. I hope that you take the ultimate responsibility for your actions and that you consecrate any destruction to the rebuilding of your higher self and a more radiant life. — Elizabeth Lesser

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness. — Immanuel Kant

Oh you who are born of the gods, easy is the descent into Hell. The door of darkness stands open day and night. But to retrace your steps, and come back out into the brightness above, that is the work, that is the labor. — Virgil

The God-image in man was not destroyed by the Fall but was only damaged and corrupted ('deformed'), and can be restored through God's grace. The scope of the integration is suggested by the descent of Christ's soul to hell, its work of redemption embracing even the dead. The psychological equivalent of this is the integration of the collective unconscious which forms an essential part of the individuation process. — Carl Jung

Facilis descensus averno - The descent into hell is easy — Cassandra Clare

But very few ordeals are redemptive and I doubt if the descent into hell teaches anything new. It can only hasten processes which are already in existence, and usually this just means that it degrades. You see, in hell one lacks the energy for any good change. This indeed is the meaning of hell. — Iris Murdoch

your mind becomes a supercomputer capable of calculating the gyrations of your car, multiplying that by the speed of the fall over the angle of descent, factoring in Newton's laws of motion and, in a split second, coming to the panicked conclusion that this is gonna hurt like hell. — Andrew Davidson

At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross
at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken. — Edgar Allan Poe

Our lives aren't even about doing real things most of the time. We think and talk about people we've never met, pretend to visit places we've never actually been, to discuss things that are just names as though they were as real as rocks or animals or something. Information Age. Hell it's the Imagination Age. We're living in our own minds.
No, she decided as the plane began its steep descent, really we're living in other people's minds. — Tad Williams

The implacable logic of retribution will prove as appalling as the crime itself, consisting of the soul's slow agonizing descent into a state of such loneliness and despair as to be finally indistinguishable from Hell. — William Shakespeare

Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he lay dying in a foreign land, "The descent to hell is the same from every place. — Diogenes Laertius

The gates of Hell are open night and day; smooth the descent and easy is the way. — Virgil

You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell. — Isabel Allende

No, this is wonderful!" Mrs. Hernandez' face turned into a wrinkle mosaic when she smiled. "It's not what you give, but the spirit in which you give. That's what's important."
Rise was on the fast track to hell, if that was the standard. Her neighbor had trouble with a heavy box, so she reached to help, thinking it might slow her descent into the fiery pit of eternal damnation. — Dawn Jayne

Hell is a different place for each man, or each man has his own particular hell. My descent into the inferno is a descent into the irrational level of existence, where the instincts and blind emotions are loose, where one lives by pure impulse, pure fantasy, and therefore pure madness. No, that is not the inferno. — Anais Nin

Facilis decensus averni. The descent into hell is easy. — Virgil

The descent into Hell is easy — Virgil

Facilis descensus Averni," he whispered, his ominous and preternatural words striking her very soul. "The descent to Hell is easy. — Sylvain Reynard

When, as today, there is a market in human organs, when fetuses are produced to make spare organs available, or to make progress in research and preventive medicine, many regard the human content of these practices as implicit. But the contempt for man that underlies it, when man is used and abused, leads
like it or not
to a descent into hell. — Pope Benedict XVI

My only regret involved the sad knowledge that I could not handle the amount of alcohol I would have enjoyed. Easy is the descent into Hell. — Robert A. Heinlein

According to the mystics, the obscure matter that creation presupposes is nothing other than divine potentiality. The act of creation is God's descent into an abyss that is simply his own potentiality and impotentiality, his capacity to and capacity not to ... In this context, "abyss" is not a metaphor ... It is the life of darkness in God, the divine root of Hell in which the Nothing is eternally produced. Only when we succeed in sinking into this Tartarus and experiencing our own impotentiality do we become capable of creating, truly becoming poets. — Giorgio Agamben

The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil. — C.S. Lewis

The great design of Jesus' descent into hell is to rouse
people out of their deep sleep, to deliver them from sin and death. — Tim Liwanag

I suddenly see us from above. I do that all the time now. I think it's because I'm losing my humanity and it's my way of marking my descent into hell. — Karen Marie Moning

Facilis descensus Averno:
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.
(The gates of Hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this task and mighty labor lies.) — Virgil

There was no half-assing a descent into hell. — Robyn Schneider

Basia coquum," Simon said. "Or whatever their motto is."
"It's 'Descensus Averno facilis est.' 'The descent into hell is easy," said Alec. "You just said "Kiss the cook."
"Dammit," said Simon. "I knew Jace was screwing with me. — Cassandra Clare

He pointed at Brother Jeremiah, who had come to a halt in front of a statue just slightly taller than he was, its base overgrown with moss. The statue was of an angel. The marble of the statue was so smooth it was almost translucent. The face of the angel was fierce and beautiful and sad. In long white hands the angel held a cup, its rim studded with marble jewels. Something about the statue tickled Clary's memory with an uneasy familiarity. There was a date inscribed on the base, 1234, and words inscribed around it: NEPHILIM: FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI.
"Is that meant to be the Mortal Cup?" she asked.
Jace nodded. "And that's the motto of the Nephilim - the Shadowhunters - there on the base."
"What does it mean?"
Jace's grin was a white flash in the darkness. "It means 'Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234.'"
"Jace - "
It means, said Jeremiah, The descent into Hell is easy. — Cassandra Clare

He had hoped she would assume he had succumbed again to methamphetamine hydrochloride and was sparing her the agony of his descent back into the hell of chemical dependence. What it really was was that he had again decided those 50 grams of resin-soaked dope, which had been so potent that on the second day it had given him an anxiety attack so paralyzing that he had gone to the bathroom in a Tufts University commemorative ceramic stein to avoid leaving his bedroom, represented his very last debauch ever with dope, and that he had to cut himself off from all possible future sources of temptation and supply, — David Foster Wallace

I will follow him to hell, and that is saying not a little, as I believe him entirely capable of the descent. — Alexandre Dumas

Visionary experience is not the same as mystical experience. Mystical experience is beyond the realm of opposites. Visionary experience is still within that realm. Heaven entails hell, and 'going to heaven' is no more liberation than is the descent into horror. Heaven is merely a vantage point from which the divine Ground can be more clearly seen than on the level of ordinary individual experience. — Aldous Huxley

Easy is the descent to hell; all night long, all day, the doors of dark Hades stand open; but to retrace the path; to come out again to the sweet air of Heaven - there is the task, there is the burden. — Virgil