Quotes & Sayings About Dying And Heaven

I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish. — Mark Haddon

Life everywhere is in vast and endless variety. So it is with life eternal, that gift of God, constituting, in its length and breadth and height and depth, the reward of the righteous. The penitent, dying thief is not going into heaven like the triumphant, dying Paul. — Herrick Johnson

I know there's no heaven. I know it all turns to nothingness. But I fear there will be some remnant of me left within that void. Left conscious by some random fluke. Something that will scream out for this. That one speck of my soul will still exist and be left trapped and wanting. For you. For the light. For anything. — Drew Magary

The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, "Where is the best place to go to?" He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had its advantages
heaven for climate, and hell for society. — Mark Twain

Sometimes heaven was feeling nothing. Maybe being drunk was a little like dying and going to heaven. Like living in the light. He kept thinking of Ileana. She was eight now. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

God is expecting us to stand in the gap between the dying earth and the heavens, for the will of God to be done on earth like it is in heaven — Sunday Adelaja

The syrup of lilies hangs thick and sweet in the air, its cloying scent the traditional mask of death and rebirth: ashes and incense, rain and dirt, and something like rosin. It's the scent Hector associates with God. The scent of heavenly things. — Kimberly Morgan

Asters

Asters - sweltering days

old adjuration/curse,

the gods hold the balance

for an uncertain hour.


Once more the golden flocks

of heaven, the light, the trim -

what is the ancient process

hatching under its dying wings?


Once more the yearned-for,

the intoxication, the rose of you -

summer leaned in the doorway

watching the swallows -


one more presentiment

where certainty is not hard to come by:

wing tips brush the face of the waters,

swallows sip speed and night. — Gottfried Benn

It is hard to lose the people we love ,but feeling sorry they died is selfish.Dying is going heaven home to God we know your papa is in heaven with our Lady and Jesus.Let us try to be happy for him. — Maryanne Raphael

Life is not the end, and death is just the beginning... — Rebecca McNutt

Lord Jesus, I need you. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Thank you for rising from the dead. I believe you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I believe you are the only way to heaven, the only way to the Father. And right now, as an act of the will, by faith, I open the door of my life and receive you as my Savior and Lord. Thank you for forgiving my sins. Thank you for giving me eternal life. Have mercy on me, Lord. Show me your will. Teach me your Word. Guide me by your Holy Spirit. Take the throne of my life, Lord Jesus, and make me the kind of person you want me to be. In your holy and precious Name I pray, amen. — Joel C. Rosenberg

But the plan of redemption had a yet broader and deeper purpose than the salvation of man. It was not for this alone that Christ came to the earth; it was not merely that the inhabitants of this little world might regard the law of God as it should be regarded; but it was to vindicate the character of God before the universe. To this result of his great sacrifice - its influence upon the intelligences of other worlds, as well as upon man - the Saviour looked forward when just before his crucifixion he said: "Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all unto [69] Me." John 12:31, 32. The act of Christ in dying for the salvation of man would not only make heaven accessible to men, but before all the universe it would justify God and his Son in their dealing with the rebellion of Satan. It would establish the perpetuity of the law of God and would reveal the nature and the results of sin. — Ellen G. White

When old companions, old lusts, and sins crowd in upon you, and when you feel that you are ready to sink, what can save you, sinking sinner ? This alone - I have a high priest in heaven, and he can support in the hour of affliction. This alone can give you peace-I have a high priest in heaven. When you are dying - when friends can do you no good - when sins rise up like spectres around your bed - what can give you peace ? This - "I have a high priest in heaven" — Robert Murray M'Cheyne

To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or lighthearted dramatic performance. — Eric Hoffer

Our thoughts are boundless, though our frames are frail,
Our souls immortal, though our limbs decay;
Though darken'd in this poor life by a veil
Of suffering, dying matter, we shall play
In truth's eternal sunbeams; on the way
To heaven's high capitol our cars shall roll;
The temple of the Power whom all obey,
That is the mark we tend to, for the soul
Can take no lower flight, and seek no meaner goal. — James Gates Percival

To the Virgins, To Make much of Time
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he is to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while you may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry. — Robert Herrick

It matters little that our churches rise to heaven, that the capitals of their pillars are sculptured and gilded, that our parchment is tinted purple, that gold is melted to form the letters of our manuscripts, and that their bindings are set with precious stones, if we have little or no care for the members of Christ, and if Christ Himself lies naked and dying before our doors. — Very Rev. John B. O'Connor O.P. P.G.

When you are dying and coming to life in each moment, would-be scientific predictions about what will happen after death are of little consequence. The whole glory of it is that we do not know. Ideas of survival and annihilation are alike based on the past, on memories of waking and sleeping, and, in their different ways, the notions of everlasting continuity and everlasting nothingness are without meaning. It needs but slight imagination to realize that everlasting time is a monstrous nightmare, so that between heaven and hell as ordinarily understood there is little to choose. — Alan W. Watts

Oh, good grief! I've never had a man pick me up before and not grunt like he's dying. I'm in heaven. Marry me, Ash, please! (Pam)
I would say yes, but I come with more baggage than even Samsonite can cover. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I don't want to wake up. I can't feel the cold of life. I can't feel fear in my dreams. When awake we are green and red bits glowing under a machine, lights turn off and on, and people of science convince themselves they know what's going on. Backs are patted, hand are shaken. Test, record, collect. They tell us what we already know. We are all dying, dying slow. When awake, there is a feeling of impending doom, and if you can't feel it, close your eyes, or open them further. When we're in a box underground, heaven is finally above us, but it's not in the sky. Heaven is the planet we lived on, and all of the angels are people. Here, in a dream, it's just me floating in the back of my mind, among parts we don't fully understand. — Craig Stone

In obedience to humanity, the King of the universe come down from heaven! In obedience to humanity, he lives imprisoned on the altar! I shall not resist. He allows humans to keep him wherever they wish-in monstrance or tabernacle; to carry him in procession; to bring him into the homes of the sick and dying; to dispense him to all, whether saint or sinner. The gospel tells how marvelously he obeyed Mary and Joseph. Today he obeys every priest in the world. — Alphonsus Liguori

Grace transforms our failings full of dread into abundant, endless comfort ... our failings full of shame into a noble, glorious rising ... our dying full of sorrow into holy, blissful life. ... . Just as our contrariness here on earth brings us pain, shame and sorrow, so grace brings us surpassing comfort, glory, and bliss in heaven ... And that shall be a property of blessed love, that we shall know in God, which we might never have known without first experiencing woe. — Julian Of Norwich

Istening means learning to hear someone's inner world and deepest feelings with far greater attention in order that we don't let our own assumptions get in the way. The dying may speak in images far more akin to dreamland than the world of everyday reality. In order to understand them we have to make adjustments to comprehend a poetic form of expression that is sometimes elusive but actually far more expressive than the world of facts. — Robert L. Wise

I had no fear of the stream's perils, and I listened with the greatest contentment to the quiet slap of water on rocks, the running whisper of the current, and the taps and creaks and croaks that rose with the mist around me. Overhead swing the glittering stars, and the bright moon shone down and lit the curling ripples of the water. At no time in my life had I been in greater danger from the elements, and yet if I learned that heaven is such as that night was, I should deem it a joy worth the dying. — Clare B. Dunkle

Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth. — N. T. Wright

But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things--namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

When we unravel the theological tomes of the ages, the makeup of God becomes quite clear. God is a human being without human limitations who is read into the heavens. We disguised this process by suggesting that the reason God was so much like a human being was that the human beings were in fact created in God's image. However, we now recognize that if was the other way around. The God of theism came into being as a human creation. As such, this God, too, was mortal and is now dying. — John Shelby Spong

Sensei says funerals are not really for the dead. They are for those left behind. "The dead are long gone by the time a funeral is held," he told us. "Who would wait when the doors of Heaven are open? Only the living would be foolish enough to still hang around on earth. — Sandy Fussell

You are going to face God's judgment for all of your earthly activities, good and bad. You will be sent to heaven if you put your faith in Christ and the cross." Christian struggled, wondering if the patient could understand such terms. "No one gets to heaven by being good on their own. It is only because Jesus paid for our bad deeds by dying on a cross. — Harry Kraus

I will simply die, as you will simply die, when our hearts stop beating. And instead of the fires of Hell or the clouds of Heaven, there will be a chorus of hungry worms or fish, depending on how we go. Isn't that what really terrifies you most of all, why you force yourself against all reason to believe in such tales? It's because you're afraid of the nothingness at the end. You're ashamed of it. — Cliff James

I have to leave now, but please know i'll be with you always. When you hear meadowlarks in the spring and see geese flying across the field in the fall, think of me. But please don't be sad. I always wanted you to be happy. Remember I will love you always. There were so many things I wanted to do still, so many things left to say to all of you. I wasn't afraid of dying. It was just leaving all of you that was so hard. We can't see beyond, but this much I know: I loved you all so much, and it was heaven having your love in return. — B.K. Loren

Oh, do not cry - be good children and we will all meet in heaven. — Andrew Jackson

I'd rather see the others."
"What others?"
"The ones who make it. The ones living in freedom now."
"If any do."
"They do."
"Some say they do. It's like dying, though, and going to heaven. Nobody ever comes back to tell you about it. — Octavia E. Butler

You've thrown down the gauntlet. You've brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.
But ... If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist ... then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master. — Chuck Palahniuk

Whatever he had lost, be it his money, his friends, his reputation, his self-respect, his inner joy and peace - one or all - he still remained his father's child. And so he says to himself: "How many of my father's hired men have all the food they want and more, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men." With these words in his heart, he was able to turn, to leave the foreign country, and go home. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Dying visions of angels and Christ and God and heaven are confined to credibly good men. Why do not bad men have such visions? They die of all sorts of diseases; they have nervous temperaments; they even have creeds and hopes about the future which they cling to with very great tenacity; why do not they rejoice in some such glorious illusions when they go out of the world? — Enoch Fitch Burr

One-third of Matthew ... one-third of Mark ... one-fourth of Luke, and one-half of John are given to [Christ's] death ... Jesus came for the express purpose of dying for sinners. When He left heaven, He knew He was going to the cross. — Billy Graham

The Talmud tells a story about a great Rabbi who is dying, he has become a goses, but he cannot die because outside all his students are praying for him to live and this is distracting to his soul. His maidservant climbs to the roof of the hut where the Rabbi is dying and hurls a clay vessel to the ground. The sound diverts the students, who stop praying. In that moment, the Rabbi dies and his soul goes to heaven. The servant, too, the Talmud says, is guaranteed her place in the world to come. — Jonathan Rosen

When I finally got up to Industrial Light And Magic to work on the 'Star Wars' movies as a model-maker, it felt like dying and going to heaven. — Adam Savage

Are you afraid of dying? Holland had asked him in the alley. And Kell was. Had always been, ever since he could remember. He feared not living, feared ceasing to exist. Lila's world may believe in Heaven and Hell, but his believed in dust. He was taught early that magic reclaiemd magic, and earth reclaimed earth, the two dividing when the body died, the person they had combined to be simply forfeit, lost. Nothing lated. Nothing remained. — V.E Schwab

You think the final act of love is setting them free to Rainbow Bridge? That is not the final act of love. The final act of love is releasing them from your leash of grief so they can be free in the heaven on the other side of the Bridge. Until you resolve your grief, you bind them to you in the land between Heaven and Earth while they wait, suspended between the worlds, for you to heal. When you are free of your grief, they are free of your grief. — Kate McGahan

I'm an atheist, I always thought, 'This is it.' If there is going to be a heaven, it should be on earth. I feel much happier than most people. I'm fairly stoic about death, but I'm not keen on dying if it's going to be long and protracted. I don't have dark nights of the soul, except occasionally. I'm such a little busy bee. — Edmund White

I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff
well, if you could see them all in Heaven
serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add. — Terry Pratchett

The dying boy said: "Father, don't you weep for me; when I get to heaven I will go straight to Jesus and tell Him that ever since I can remember you have tried to lead me to Him." I would rather have my children say that of me after I am gone; or if they die before me, I would rather they should take that message to the Master than to have a monument over me reaching to the skies. — Dwight L. Moody

The truest form of love is where you are able to put your own needs aside to do what is best for the one you love. If you could know where I am now and if you love as you say you do, you would never ever wish me back from the love and the comfort and the bliss of where I am and where I wait for you. — Kate McGahan

There is a legend about a bird which sings only once in it's life, more beautifully than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves it's nest, it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, it impales it's breast on the longest, sharpest thorn. But as it is dying, it rises above it's own agony to outsing the Lark and the Nightingale. The Thornbird pays it's life for that one song, and the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles, as it's best is brought only at the cost of great pain; Driven to the thorn with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand.... and still, we do it." ~ Colleen McCullough — Colleen McCullough

What does hanging on a cross for twenty-four hours mean to a man who has no children,' I said, 'especially when he knows he's dying for a good cause -- indeed, that he's saving the whole world and then going straight into the best place in Heaven? What's that compared to the suffering I've had to put up with for months and years with the house full of children, when for many whole nights I've shrieked with pain unceasingly and without relief, and I'll soon be dead, and that without having anything to die for; and there'll be no heavenly Kingdom for me, for I know the children will go on crying when I'm dead, and swearing and quarrelling, and begging for milk they can't get. — Halldor Laxness

To say that New York came up to its advance billing would be the baldest of understatements. Being there was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying. — P.G. Wodehouse

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. — C.S. Lewis

Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair;
A lamp unto my feet, that sun was given;
And death was safety and great joy to find;
But dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven. — Michelangelo

There's not 20 ways. It's not your way. It's either God's way or the highway. That's it. If you want to get to heaven, you have to come God's way, and the way that God established was the way of His Son dying on the cross. — Skip Heitzig

If we listen and observe carefully the dying can teach us important things that we need to learn in preparing for the end of our own life's journey. — Robert L. Wise

Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it: only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it. — James Joyce

Death will paint everything a different shade of remorse.

You'll feel guilty that you're still breathing.
But you can't stop.
You'll feel guilty for wanting to laugh again.
And it will be awful the first time that you do.
You'll feel guilty for just about everything at first.
And someday, at some point, you'll start to feel guilty . . .
for forgetting to feel guilty.

But of all Heaven's lessons, guilt isn't one of them. You don't need to hold on to it. It doesn't need to be a practice and it shouldn't be your life.

Heaven would never approve of your guilt.
Because Heaven has no regrets. — Tessa Shaffer

If I Must Go
If I must go to heaven's end
Climbing the ages like a stair,
Be near me and forever bend
With the same eyes above me there;
Time will fly past us like leaves flying,
We shall not heed, for we shall be
Beyond living, beyond dying,
Knowing and known unchangeably. — Sara Teasdale

Perhaps we meet our heaven at the start and not the end of life. — John Updike

I kept reading.
I miss you already, bro.
I love you, Augustus. God bless and keep you.
You'll live forever in our hearts, big man.
(That particularly galled me, because it implied the immortality of those left behind:
You will live forever in my memory, becauuse I will live forever! I AM YOUR GOD NOW, DEAD BOY! I OWN YOU! Thinking you won't die is yet another side effect of dying.)
You were always such a great friend I'm sorry I didn't see more of you after you left school, bro. I bet you're already playing ball in heaven. — John Green

Heaven comes to people - and their loved ones - when they are dying. It is not uncommon for angels to appear when people are on the edge of death, and people who have had near-death experiences often describe feelings of indescribable peace - Angels. — Gary Kinnaman

This gospel I preach to you. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Trust him quietly, humbly, simply, immediately. Trust him to make you a holy man - to deliver you from the power of the devil and the power of sin, and he will do it: I will be bound for him that he will keep his word. Jesus is truth itself, and never breaks his word. He never boasts that he can do what he cannot do. He has gone into heaven, and he is therefore "able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." Only trust him. Trust him to overcome the evil you have to fight with. You will conquer it, man, if you will only trust Jesus. Woman, there is hope for you if you will trust the wounded, bleeding, dying, risen, living Savior. He will battle for you, and you shall get the victory. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I hate you for all the years I 'll have to live without you. How can a heart hurt this much and still go on beating? How can I feel this bad without dying from it?
I 've bruised my knees with praying to have you back. None of my prayers have been answered. I tried to send them up to heaven but they 're trapped here on earth, like bobwhites beneath the snow. I try to sleep and it's like I 'm suffocating.
Where have you gone?
Once you said that if I wasn't with you, it wouldn't be heaven.
I can't let go of you. Come back and haunt me. Come back. — Lisa Kleypas

Thou lovest like an infinite God when Thou lovest; Thou movest heaven and earth to save Thy loved ones. Thou becomest man, a babe, the vilest of men, covered with reproaches, dying with infamy and under the pangs of the cross; all this is not too much for an infinite love. — Francois Fenelon

Katie appeared as a ghost and cradled him in her arms and carried him, a frail dying version of her old husband, to heaven. The radio which was powered off suddenly comes on and played their song Follow Me. Nobody could see her only Ronan and he smiled and says "I knew you would come back for me love — Annette J. Dunlea

Ye who amid this feverish world would wear A body free of pain, of cares a mind, Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke And volatile corruption, from the dead, The dying, sickening, and the living world Exhal'd, to sully heaven's transparent dome With dim mortality. — John Armstrong

JAMIE'S SONG 'HEAVEN':

You hold me so tight that I can't breathe,
You make me feel light that I can't sleep.
Float from our bed, fly away,
Soaring like angels through the heavens and seas.

I wish that we hadn't taken so long,
To realise this is where we belong.
This is the life, that you and I
Have been dying for.

If heaven is this,
This place in your arms,
I'm not afraid of dying,
I want to die tonight.
If heaven is this,
Your lips when we kiss,
I'm not afraid of dying,
Let them kill me tonight.

And I know I'll go to heaven,
Because I made you smile.
Yes, I know I'll go to heaven,
Because you loved our life.
But if they banish me to hell,
You will pull me out again.
You belong in heaven,
And I belong with you. — Neha Yazmin

I put my hand on the altar rail. 'What if ... what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reason, or ... ' Mam's pancakes with Toblerone sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, 'Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite'; or Jacko and Sharon singing 'For She's A Squishy Marshmallow' instead of 'For She's A Jolly Good Fellow' every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it's not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. 'S'pose Heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there for ever, but more like ... Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or ... upstairs windows when you're lost ... — David Mitchell

When you're dying, the unicorn up in heaven gets a note from an angel telling her there's a person who's going to need a ride up soon. The unicorn finds out what the person likes. Favorite foods and books, colors and activities, pets and games. She gets a room ready for him, or her, near people who she knows they'll enjoy being with, maybe other friends and family who have died before.
When the unicorn is done, she jumps off of heaven's perch, flies through the blue sky, around the clouds, over any rainbows, and down to the person. She's invisible to everyone. She patiently waits. When the person dies, she gathers them up on her back, using her hooves and horn. All of a sudden, they sit up straight and smile, they laugh, because they're on top of a unicorn and alive again. They hold on tight to her golden reins and the unicorn takes them to their new home, where they're happy. — Cathy Lamb

Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

When I was young I used to have this nightmare about dying. I used to lie awake at night screaming. All my schoolfriends went to heaven or hell, and I was sent to Southend. — Douglas Adams

Life's short when compared to eternity, but eternity is only worth it because of life. — Scott Thompson

The life which, if i were still a man with pride, honor, ambition and so forth, would seem like the bottom rung of degredation. It's a negative reality, just like death
a sort of heaven without the pain and terror of dying. — Henry Miller

15 Then all the women present and all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to idols - a great crowd of all the Judeans living in northern Egypt and southern Egypt* - answered Jeremiah, 16 "We will not listen to your messages from the LORD! 17 We will do whatever we want. We will burn incense and pour out liquid offerings to the Queen of Heaven just as much as we like - just as we, and our ancestors, and our kings and officials have always done in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For in those days we had plenty to eat, and we were well off and had no troubles! 18 But ever since we quit burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and stopped worshiping her with liquid offerings, we have been in great trouble and have been dying from war and famine. — Anonymous

it will make sense the moment you come Home. I could see it all so clearly. I could see what it is that we are waiting for. I knew in one solitary moment why I had learned obedience and why I valued nothing on the earth but love. It's all that matters. It is all there is. — Kate McGahan

If one cannot accept failure and scorn, how is he to make his art? It's like wanting to go to heaven without dying. — Russell Edson

The heaven-and-hell framework has four central elements: the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus's dying for our sins, and believing. — Marcus J. Borg

A dying man asked a dying man for eternal life; a man without possessions asked a poor man for a Kingdom; a thief at the door of death asked to die like a thief and steal Paradise. One would have thought a saint would have been the first soul purchased over the counter of Calvary by the red coins of Redemption, but in the Divine plan it was a thief who was the escort of the King of kings into Paradise. If Our Lord had come merely as a teacher, the thief would never have asked for forgiveness. But since the thief's request touched the reason of His coming to earth, namely, to save souls, the thief heard the immediate answer:
'I promise thee, this day thou shalt be
With Me in Paradise'
(Luke 23:43)
It was the thief's last prayer, perhaps even his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything, and found everything. When even the disciples were doubting and only one was present at the Cross, the thief owned and acknowledged Him as Saviour. — Fulton J. Sheen

In theory, the idea of eternity in heaven singing God's praises sounds really good, but when I realize I have to go through the death part to get there, I'm not quite so enamored with the idea. — Kim Hunt Harris

When my grandmother - may she attain the Kingdom of Heaven - was dying, my mother, as was then the custom, took me to her bedside and, as I kissed her right hand, my dear grandmother placed her dying left hand on my head and said in a whisper, yet very distinctly: "Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do." Having said this, she gazed at the bridge of my nose and, evidently noticing my perplexity and my obscure understanding of what she had said, added somewhat angrily and imperiously: "Either do nothing - just go to school - or do something nobody else does Whereupon she immediately, without hesitation and with a perceptible impulse of disdain for all around her, and with commendable self-cognizance, gave up her soul directly into the hands of His Faithfulness, the Archangel Gabriel. — G.I. Gurdjieff

My troubles are many They're deep as a well I swear there ain't no Heaven And I pray there ain't no hell But I'll never know by living only my dying will tell. And when I die and when I'm gone There'll be, one child born And a world to carry on, to carry on. — Laura Nyro

I am beginning to see the fallacy in the Western world's take on dying. Too often we are taught that this one life is all there is and when it ends, that's it. Or, instead of once again returning to a loving God who welcomes us back Home with open arms, we are told that when we die we must stand in front of a stern and unforgiving deity who sits on a throne and looks at every mistake we have ever made, deciding if we are good enough to enter heaven. And, if we do make it past that stringent test, we certainly aren't able to visit our friends and family still living. No wonder so many of us are afraid of death. I also find it fascinating that most religions believe in angels or wise ascended souls who brought messages to certain people on earth (Moses and Noah, for example) thousands of years ago, but deny that such an occurrence can happen now. What, did God just decide not to talk to us anymore? — Donna Visocky

There is a world above, Where parting is unknown; A whole eternity of love, Form'd for the good alone; And faith beholds the dying here Translated to that happier sphere. — James Montgomery

But since those Romans were in an earthly city, and had before them, as the end of all the offices undertaken in its behalf, its safety, and a kingdom, not in heaven, but in earth - not in the sphere of eternal life, but in the sphere of demise and succession, where the dead are succeeded by the dying - what else but glory should they love, by which they wished even after death to live in the mouths of their admirers? — Augustine Of Hippo

Less than twenty-four hours ago, I had a family and a home and a dreamworld I thought was as close to heaven as you could get without dying.
I have none of that now.
My brother is dead. My parents threw me out of the house - again - with barely enough to fill a small suitcase. And my dreamworld? I was right when I figured that, if God ever did exist, he turned his back on humanity centuries ago. — Erica Cameron

Although your decision to die is firm, your decision to become a god has caused you to suffer. You suffered, wondering why you couldn't cure Magdalia's illness, wondering why you weren't capable of saving her. All you wanted to do was protect your only sister, wasn't that it? Not in heaven, but here on Earth. You wanted to make Lady Maldaria happy more than anything else, didn't you? And so now, to avoid the guilt of your loved one dying at your expense, you're willing to die yourself. You've already come to this realization. You know you aren't god. You're just a fragile human being who's capable of feeling pain and having doubts. Go back to being an ordinary man and start all over again for the sake of those who look up to you.
-Kenshin — Nobuhiro Watsuki

Not Brangien who was faithful, not Brangien, but themselves had these lovers to fear, for hearts so stricken will lose their vigilance. Love pressed them hard, as thirst presses the dying stag to the stream; love dropped upon them from high heaven, as a hawk slipped after long hunger falls right upon the bird. And love will not be hidden. — Joseph Bedier

But I pushed and pulled in vain, the wheels would not turn. It was as though the brakes were jammed, and heaven knows they were not, for my bicycle had no brakes. And suddenly overcome by a great weariness, in spite of the dying day when I always felt most alive, I threw the bicycle back in the bush and lay down on the ground, on the grass, careless of the dew, I never feared the dew. — Samuel Beckett

The People are a capricious and stupid beast that doesn't know its own strength and bears burdens and blows with patience;... it knows not what fear it inspires, or that its masters have prepared a magic potion to stupefy it. What a fantastic situation! The People beating and tying itself up with its own hands; fighting and dying for a few pennies from the King,... totally unaware that everything between heaven and earth really belongs to it and stoning to death anyone who would remind it of its rights. — Tommaso Campanella

In each of us lies sleeping beauty, wasted potential, dying dreams. We sleep and live in dormant twilight, never knowing what it means to live, to love the bits of heaven that we can unearth deep in our hearts; not recognizing that our salvation is ever-present in those parts that we have disowned, denied, forgotten. The thorns of fear thwart faint attempt. The prince is courage, the kiss believing and then with these our life begins. — Kay Thompson