Purgatory The Quotes & Sayings

THERE CAME A TIME many years ago when I decided to agree to the baptism of my firstborn. It was a question of pleasing his mother's family. Nonetheless, I had to endure some teasing from Christian friends - how could the old atheist have sold out so easily? I decided to go deadpan and say, Well, I don't want his infant soul to go to hell or purgatory for want of some holy water. And it was often value for money: The faces of several believers took on a distinct look of discomfort at the literal rendition of their own supposed view. — Christopher Hitchens

There's no such thing as security in this life sweetheart, and the sooner you accept that fact, the better off you'll be. The person who strives for security will never be free. The person who believes she's found security will never reach paradise. What she mistakes for security is purgatory. You know what purgatory is, Gwendolyn? It's the waiting room, it's the lobby. Not only does she have the wrong libretto, she's stuck in the lobby where she can't see the show. — Tom Robbins

Nay, are there not moods which shall find no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? — W.B.Yeats

Since both the departed saints and we ourselves are in Christ, we share with them in the 'communion of saints.' They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist they are there with us, along with the angels and archangels. Why then should we not pray for and with them? The reason the Reformers and their successors did their best to outlaw praying for the dead was because that had been so bound up with the notion of purgatory and the need to get people out of it as soon as possible. Once we rule out purgatory, I see no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead and every reason why we should - not that they will get out of purgatory but that they will be refreshed and filled with God's joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God? — N. T. Wright

He shrugged. "I was ... thinking."
"About what?"
"The fires of purgatory."
She had to sit down. He wasn't making any sense now. "What does that mean?" she asked.
"Patrick told me he would walk through the fires of purgatory if he had to in order to please his wife."
She went over to the bed and sat down on the side. "And?" she prodded when he didn't continue.
He stripped out of his clothing and walked over to her. He pulled her to her feet and stared down to her.
"And I have only just realized I would do the same for you. — Julie Garwood

Supernatural hasn't spent a lot of time on relationship stories, and this is a really nice mechanism to do that without imposing that on the forward momentum of these other stories that we're telling. In the writers' room we tend to say, "We're never going to be able to give a hell or Purgatory as good as people's imaginations," so the instinct is normally not to go there. But, we went the other way this year and said, "We are going to go there," because there's a really, really strong character thing going on down there. — Jeremy Carver

Purgatory exists as a result of God's mercy. The requirements for entering Heaven are very high because "nothing unclean will enter it" (Revelation 21:27). To go directly to Heaven you must be completely free from the stain of sin. What this means is that you cannot have any unrepented venial sin in your life, you must have fully paid the penalty for all of your sins, and you can not have attachments to the world that takes you away from God (i.e. materialism, jealousy, hatred, etc.). With this in mind you can see how difficult it is to avoid Purgatory, but with the grace of God it can be done. — Johan Cyprich

Oh, torture. Is this purgatory, and if it is, why is it so much like the first grade? — Margaret Atwood

Gold is the most precious of all commodities; gold constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it has all he needs in the world, as also the means of rescuing souls from purgatory, and restoring them to the enjoyment of paradise. — Christopher Columbus

She is the woman that contradicts Simone de Beauvoir's saying "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." She is the woman that makes your tooth pain seem like a trivial matter in comparison to the heartaches she causes as she deliberately passes by your side. She is the woman that makes your throat feel swollen and your tie to suddenly seem too tight. She is the woman that is able to take you to the seven heavens with a whisper; straight to cloud number nine.. She is the woman that erases all other women unintentionally and becomes without demanding the despot of your heart. She is the woman that sends you back and forth to purgatory and resurrects you with each unintended touch. She is the woman that will ask of you to burn Rome just to collect for her a handful of dust. — Malak El Halabi

You may never reach that glorious moment until you die, so live life on the edge halfway between heaven and hell ... and let's all dance in the middle in purgatory — Lady Gaga

You are My Mother, the Mother of Mercy, and the consolation of the souls in Purgatory. — Brigit Of Kildare

Welcome to Ruler's purgatory. It's the special club you love to hate. — Scarlett Dawn

Do you know what it's like to run spellcheck for six hours? It's like a party in purgatory. A party in purgatory where all they have to drink is sugar-free Kool-aid, and the only game to play is Monopoly, and none of your friends show up. — Patrick Rothfuss

If you think your desires are selfish or cruel, hate yourself. If you think the world unjust, then hate your god. — Katherine Pine

In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I have held and hold souls to be immortal ... Speaking as a Catholic, they do not pass from body to body, but go to paradise, purgatory or hell. But I have reasoned deeply, and, speaking as a philosopher, since the soul is not found without body and yet is not body, it may be in one body or in another, and pass from body to body. — Giordano Bruno

I think God's wrath and purgatory are the only things keeping me on the straight and narrow. I like the idea of purgatory. It's like a cosmic do-over. — Katee Sackhoff

I had the feeling that Sarajevo was the perfect place to shoot the film I wanted to shoot. It is the perfect illustration of purgatory. — Jean-Luc Godard

I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you - then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest."
His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.
Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well. — Diana Gabaldon

Escorts to Heavens I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the Lord!" - Psalm 122:1 St. John Macias worked for the sick in Peru and, no matter how tired he was, prayed three Rosaries on his knees every night for the poor souls in purgatory. On his deathbed, St. John the Evangelist appeared to him and said that through his prayers St. John Macias had released one million four hundred thousand souls from purgatory. When he died, thousands upon thousands of souls poured from heaven to greet him. — Susan Tassone

The same fire" (which he decides to be material) " torments the damned in hell and the just in purgatory ... The least pain in purgatory exceeds the greatest in this life. — Thomas Aquinas

Yet, til now, her discipline had less to do with her strict Catholic upbringing than the fact that she hadn't met anybody who had aroused her to the point where she felt it was worth risking purgatory. — Cynthia Freeman

I went into the bends. I got drunker and stayed drunker than a shit skunk in Purgatory. I even had the butcher knife against my throat one night in the kitchen and then I thought, easy, old boy, your little girl might want you to take her to the zoo. Ice cream bars, chimpanzees, tigers, green and red birds, and the sun coming down on top of her head, the sun coming down and crawling into the hairs of your arms, easy, old boy. — Charles Bukowski

By marrying to soon, many individuals sacrifice their chance to struggle through this purgatory of solitude and search toward a greater sense of self-confidence. They glance at the world outside the family and with hardly a second thought grasp anxiously for a partner. In marriage they seek a substitute for the security of the family of origin and an escape from aloneness. What they do not realize is that moving so quickly from one family to another, they make it easy to transfer to the new marriage all their difficult experiences in the family of origin. — Augustus Y. Napier

Someone, he thought rather crossly, ought to see him and tell him just what the sentence was, until he should have suffered enough to be purified, and at last to enter the Kingdom of God. Whether he was expecting a demon or an angel was uncertain. He had no idea of the staffing requirements of Purgatory; it wasn't a matter the dominie had addressed in his schooldays. — Diana Gabaldon

What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory. — Mary Wollstonecraft

The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests-a gold mine. — Nicolas Chamfort

Old age is the Outpatient's Dept of purgatory. — William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley

Only after the words were spoken did she realize what she had said. "My sins are all your fault, Brodick, and if I have to go to purgatory, then by God, you're going with me. Ramsey, if you do not stop laughing,I swear I shall toss you over this cliff."
"Do you love him, lass?" Father asked.
"I do not," she answered emphatically.
"It isn't a requirement," Laggan pointed out.
"I should hope not," she cried.
"But it would make your life easier," he countered.
"Gillian, you will tell the truth," Brodick demanded.
He grabbed hold of her hand. She tried to pull back, but he wouldn't let go.
"I have told the truth. I don't love Ramsey, and if he doesn't stop laughing at me, the Sinclairs will soon be looking for a new laird."
"Not Ramsey," Laggan shouted so he could be heard over Ramsey's laughter. "I'm asking you if you love Brodick."
"Did you tell Father I love you? Who else did you tell? — Julie Garwood

In medieval times, the Church used to sell 'indulgences' for money. This amounted to paying for some number of days' remission from purgatory, and the Church literally (and with breathtaking presumption) issued signed certificates specifying the number of days off that had been purchased ... And of all its money-making rip-offs, the selling of indulgences must surely rank among the greatest con tricks in history ... — Richard Dawkins

I see no reason why I should not live on indefinitely just as I have done, and on the whole I am more comfortable here than in Purgatory, a place that I imagine to be like the suburbs of London. — Mary Borden

Fitting is a luxury rarely given to immigrants, or children of immigrants. We are stuck in emotional purgatory. Home, somehow, is always the last place you left, and never the place you're in. — Scaachi Koul

A brilliant treatment of the history of Purgatory in England and its survivals and echoes throughout Shakespeare's plays, above all Hamlet. — Carol Zaleski

In my opinion, the difference between the crusaders and us was a matter of degree. Europe's medieval Catholics claimed their goal was to save Muslims from purgatory; we claimed that we wanted to help the Saudis modernize. — John Perkins

What is this 'baronet'?" the prince asked.
"Endlessly in between," Harry replied with a sigh. "A bit like purgatory, really. — Julia Quinn

Me writing the book and the subsequent interactions that we had were actually the cap on that experience. We were still in this weird purgatory about it when I published the book. When I gave them the galleys and what ensued after that, then I understood a lot more about our relationships and what the experience meant to them. I'd never wanted to know what they thought about it at all. — Melissa Febos

Purgatory fire will be more intolerable than all the torments that can be felt or conceived in this life. — Venerable Bede

He'd never seen a more miserable gown. The color hovered in some purgatory between raincloud and ditchwater and it looked as if the pieces of it were cut to a pattern of indifference, then stitched with resentment. — Jayne Fresina

The instability of a white neighborhood under pressure from the very possibility of integration put the neighborhood into a kind of real estate purgatory. It set off a downward cycle of anticipation, in which worried whites no longer bought homes in white neighborhoods that might one day attract colored residents even if none lived there at the time. Rents and purchase prices were dropped "in a futile attempt to attract white residents," as Hirsch put it. With prices falling and the neighborhood's future uncertain, lenders refused to grant mortgages or made them more difficult to obtain. Panicked whites sold at low prices to salvage what equity they had left, giving the homeowners who remained little incentive to invest any further to keep up or improve their properties. — Isabel Wilkerson

Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into joy? Should we not reply, With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleansed first. It may hurt, you know-even so, sir. — C.S. Lewis

If virtue accompany it, it is the heart's paradise; if vice associate it, it is the soul's purgatory. — Francis Quarles

To wake people up. To break the spell of autopilot. Aim to get that smile that they don't normally let loose. Or to make them comment, "Hm that's a good question, I never thought about that!" When you rescue people from the purgatory of meaningless small talk, you're doing a good deed. So get to the real stuff that makes them wake up and care. — Charlie Houpert

Believe no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise. And day by day this happiness grows as God flows into these souls, more and more as the hindrance to His entrance is consumed. Sin's rust is the hindrance, and the fire burns the rust away so that more and more the soul opens itself up to the divine inflowing. — Catherine Of Siena

The IPO is no exit for the entrepreneur; it's the start of purgatory. — Vivek Wadhwa

Cole stilled when his feral eyes found her, roaming every inch as though searching for a wound. The doorway framed him like a portal to purgatory, and he stood like an avenging archangel come to wreak a wrath no less than biblical. The swells of his powerful chest heaved against the white of his shirtsleeves now blotched and stained with blood. The blade on his prosthesis was extended past the motionless metal fingers, and blood dripped from it into a thick crimson puddle on the marble floor. — Kerrigan Byrne

Politics is the art of promising heaven and delivering purgatory, and claiming hero status for saving your country from hell. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, as Reenie used to say. Could it be that Myra is my designated guardian angel? Or is she instead a foretaste of Purgatory? And how do you tell the difference? — Margaret Atwood

God has protected his anointed. And the wrath of Purgatory is certainly coming for those who run and are in need of its cleansing fire. You can run, but you can't hide. ~Father Abraham — Lucian Bane

Every year, in the deep midwinter, there descends upon this world a terrible fortnight ... every shop is a choked mass of humanity ... nerves are jangled and frayed, purses emptied to no purposes, all amusements and all occupations suspended in favor of frightful businesses with brown paper, string, letters, cards, stamps, and crammed post offices. This period is doubtless a foretaste of whatever purgatory lies in store for human creatures. — Rose Macaulay

I live in the social purgatory of the San Fernando Valley, while my eldest daughter is bused to a charter school in the fantasy land of Bel Air. — Shawn Amos

The soul that is unable to forgive is sentenced to an endless purgatory where time stands still and it is forced to relive its pain over and over onto eternity. — Max Patrick

A person may say I am not much concerned how long I stay in purgatory, provided I may come to eternal life. Let no one reason thus. Purgatory fire will be more dreadful than whatever torments can be seen imagined, or endured in this world. He who is afraid now to put his finger into the fire, does he not fear lest he be then all buried in torments for a long time? — Caesarius Of Arles

Ah yes, the dreaded one-way system ... He and Nancy had laughed later, imagining Dante redesigning Purgatory into a one-way system offering occasional glimpses of St. Peter and the pearly gates over two separate sets of dividing concrete barriers. — Helen Simonson

This spirit of humanity breathes in Cicero and Virgil. Hence the veneration paid to the poet of the Aeneid by the fathers and throughout the middle ages. Augustine calls him the noblest of poets, and Dante, "the glory and light of other poets," and "his master," who guided him through the regions of hell and purgatory to the very gates of Paradise. It was believed that in his fourth Eclogue he had prophesied the advent of Christ. This interpretation is erroneous; but "there is in Virgil," says an accomplished scholar,84 "a vein of thought and sentiment more devout, more humane, more akin to the Christian than is to be found in any other ancient poet, whether Greek or Roman. He was a spirit prepared and waiting, though he knew it not, for some better thing to be revealed. — Philip Schaff

It is high time that I learn to be more careful about hope, a reckless emotion for travelers. The sensible approach would be to the expect the worst, the very worst, that way you avoid grievous disappointment and who knows with a tiny bit of luck, you might even have a moderately pleasant surprise, like the difference between hell and purgatory. — Martha Gellhorn

I'm in emotional purgatory, the up and the down, the right and the wrong. I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying not to ... touch him — Tarryn Fisher

The store was filled with hollow-eyed people standing in line: at the sandwich counter, at the soda fountain, at the register. All of them waiting, waiting, their hands full of candy, chips, cups of coffee, money. It was like purgatory, with snacks. Not just the customers; the employees, too. They worked the registers, squirted ketchup on hot dogs, piled limp lettuce onto flaccid lunch meat and waited for it to be over, waited until they could go home. — Kelly Braffet

Sure, if you saw your friend in hell, you would persuade him hard to come thence, if that would serve ; and why do you not now persuade him to prevent it? The charity of our ignorant forefathers may rise up in judgment against us, and condemn us. They would give all their estates almost, for so many masses, or pardons, to deliver the souls of their friends from a feigned purgatory, and we will not so much as importunately admonish and entreat them, to save theme from the certain flames of hell ; though this may be effectual to do them good, and the other will do none (403). Hadst thou rather he should burn for ever in hell, than thou shouldst lose his favour, or the maintenance thou hast from him? (408) — Richard Baxter

I am often told that the model of balance for the novelist should be Dante, who divided his territory up pretty evenly between hell, purgatory, and paradise. There can be no objection to this, but also there can be no reason to assume that the result of doing it in these times will give us the balanced picture it gave in Dante's. Dante lived in the thirteenth century, when that balance was achieved by the faith of his age. We live now in an age which doubts both fact and value, which is swept this way and that by momentary convictions. Instead of reflecting a balance from the world around him, the novelist now has to achieve one from a felt balance inside himself. — Flannery O'Connor

At this point, harking back to the stuff about souls, Andersen bolts on a perplexing Christian salvation message about how the Little Mermaid can earn a soul if she is good for three hundred years, but every time she sees 'a rude, naughty child', she'll get more time in purgatory. Don't be rude or naughty or the mermaids will suffer? Please. Even as a child, I knew this was ridiculous. — Samantha Ellis

I had lost all perspective; I was wandering in a desperate purgatory (with a gray man in a gray boat in a gray river: an apathetic Charon dawdling upon a passionless phlegmatic River Styx ... and a petulant Christ child bawling on the train ... ). — Sylvia Plath

Retirement homes are never lovely places. The food is usually overcooked, the carpet stained from overactive bowels, and the smell of hand lotion, cheap perfume, and urine never really leaves the place, no matter how many times the beds are washed and the walls are scrubbed. They are a place of holding, a purgatory to the not-yet-dead. — Jennifer Arnett

I thought about telling him the truth: 'Oh, nothing. Just having my soul exorcised so I can roam around
purgatory, looking for the ghost of the dead cowboy who used to live in my bedroom. — Meg Cabot

The archive of supposed photocopies (I.E. memory) actually offers up strange creatures; the green paradise of childhood loves that Baudelaire recalled is for many a future in reverse, an obverse of hope in the face of the gray purgatory of adult loves. — Julio Cortazar

Are you a vegetarian?' I ask, based on the evidence in front of me.
She nods.
'Why?'
'Because I have this theory that when we die, every animal that we've eaten has a chance at eating us back. So if you're a carnivore and you add up all the animals you've eaten
well, that's a long time in purgatory, being chewed.'
'Really?'
She laughs. 'No. I'm just sick of the question. I mean, I'm a vegetarian because I think it's wrong to eat other sentient creatures. And it sucks for the environment. — David Levithan

You can compromise between good, better, and best, and you can compromise between bad and worse and terrible. But you can't compromise between good and evil. And now people look at the other side as a completely different kind of animal and say, 'They are taking the country down the road to purgatory.' It's complete intolerance. — Gary Ackerman

Please. Don't use the Lord's name, unless you're in prayer. It's a hundred years in purgatory. — Dorothea Benton Frank

The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection, from the present on to the future. This is why purgatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story. It is where we are now. If we are Christians, if we believe in the risen Jesus as Lord, if we are baptized members of his body, then we are passing right now through the sufferings which form the gateway to life. — N. T. Wright

If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library. — Stephen King

The writer, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterwards of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise. He follows the Roman Poet. — Dante Alighieri

This wasn't life, of course. This was life support. This was what the medical world had fashioned to take the place of Purgatory. — Daniel Wallace

Major League Baseball has created a Pete Rose purgatory, and that's where he is. And that's where he's always going to be. It's unfortunate that the commissioner's office has decided to allow that to be the reality. I don't think Pete would mind if they said 'No' to Pete. Pete wants them to go one way or the other and get him out of the void he's in. — Mike Schmidt

She was lost.
Stumbling around the uneven floors and precarious book towers falling against each other for support, Alice realised she would have to do the unthinkable and talk loudly in a bookshop.
Maybe even shout.
Where were the staff?
Where were all the people who had ever read or owned these volumes? Where were the writers who created them? She walked on carefully through this purgatory of print, assuming the stoic reserve of a war widow seeking a lost husband among the silent names blurring past. — Josh Redman

So how does it feel? is the reasonable question you hear a lot when your book completes the long ascent from production purgatory to movieplex. — David Mitchell

In hindsight, I know that high school is a festering pit of boredom and hormones, not to be taken as seriously as it seemed while I was there. It is earthly purgatory before you enter the better parts of your life: you've got one foot in heaven and the other in hell. — Alida Nugent

History will be erased in the universal purgatory. — Dejan Stojanovic

Well, this place was not purgatory, Nirvana, or any sort of rebirth, and it occurred to Nick that regardless of what people believed, the universe had its own ideas. — Neal Shusterman

Finally, I formulate and say a little prayer to God, and since we haven't officially spoken since my mom and Elliott died that takes up quite a bit of my time.
The rest of it I spend on trying to determine what I think love really is and what I actually feel for Tally Landon at this point. Upon deep reflection, I realize that I must be at the edge of life's abyss. This is me. All there is left of me; and yet, I'm looking over and contemplating its meaning on whether to jump or stay. I'm not sure this feeling for Tally Landon is made up of love any more than it is of hate. This must be a kind of purgatory - the in-between place - because these pervasive feelings of rage and passion for Tally are equalized and actually co-mingle together - like fire and water - each ready to extinguish the other. I've come to accept the truth. There may be nothing left for us. It could go either way. — Katherine Owen

God? We don't know what He's like. But at least now that we're dead we all know we don't know, whereas on Earth we all thought we knew, and those who didn't know didn't know that they knew they didn't know. They didn't find that out till they'd been here in purgatory for a while. Now we all know we don't know. Even the angels. — E.A.A. Wilson

A prison! heav'ns, I loath the hated name,
Famine's metropolis, the sink of shame,
A nauseous sepulchre, whose craving womb
Hourly inters poor mortals in its tomb;
By ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possess'd,
Ev'n purgatory itself to thee 's a jest. — Tom Brown Jr.

Purgatory surpasses heaven and hell in poetry, because it represents a future and the others do not. — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

The self-help books and websites haven't come up with a proper title for spouses living in the purgatory that exists before the courts have officially ratified your personal tragedy. — Jonathan Tropper

Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That He can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with Him and can stand there in the fullness of life. Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each of them a pure heart is revealed, and we can see that we all belong together in one enormous symphony of being. — Pope Benedict XVI

My mother always told me if I really didn't wan to do something, if I was really tired, but if I had helped someone and I really went out of my way for them but I asked nothing for it, that I should donate my energy to the souls in purgatory-meaning that to give my goodness to those who are trapped. This is purgatory/limbo. This is a very Catholic thing that very few people really understand. — Peter Steele

For years they have pursued me. Their persistence has kept me underground ... forced me to live in purgatory ... laboring beneath the earth like a chthonic monster. — Dan Brown

The Enlightenment, finally, invented progressive 'history' as an inner-worldly purgatory in order to develop the conditions of possibility of a perfected 'society'. This provided the required setting for the aggressive social theology of the Modern Age to drive out the political theology of the imperial eras. What was the Enlightenment in its deep structure if not an attempt to translate the ancient rhyme on learning and suffering - mathein pathein - into a collective and species-wide phenomenon? Was its aim not to persuade the many to expose themselves to transitional ordeals that would precede the great optimization of all things? — Peter Sloterdijk

So many people of color who made major contributions to American history have been trapped in the purgatory of history. — Henry Louis Gates

I thought I would get calmer, surer, but each time we come close I feel almost sick at first. As though each time vibrates with the times before. I feel a terrible sorrow coming up my throat, I don't know why. And it can only be consoled against the length of her body. Lying down with her for the first time ... all the pain I didn't know I had, till at her touch it disappeared like smoke. Is this what purgatory feels like? To burn painlessly? If so, why isn't it called heaven? — Ann-Marie MacDonald

God
if he really exist
is good, alive, self-conscious, and governs all things according to his benevolent and holy providence; but the world shows no indications of such a benevolent and holy Providence. This earth appears to be a hell, or at best a planet condemned
a sort of purgatory: it is filled with violence, tyranny and injustice, and yet God, if he exist, is absolute sovereign, and has willed that things should be as they are!
Therefore there is no God. — William Batchelder Greene

Gaze not on beauty too much, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burn thee. If thou like it, it deceives thee; if thou love it, it disturbs thee; if thou hunt after it, it destroys thee. If virtue accompany it, it is the heart's paradise; if vice associate it, it is the soul's purgatory. It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fool's furnace. — Francis Quarles

The Catholic Church is a thousand times better than your Protestant Church upon that question [of damnation]. The Catholic Church believes in purgatory - that is, a place where a fellow can get a chance to make a motion for a new trial. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I believe - I daily find it proved - that we can get nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, except out of purifying flame, or through strengthening peril. We err; we fall; we are humbled - then we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out of the gilded cup of vice, or from the beggar's wallet of avarice; we are sickened, degraded; everything good in us rebels against us; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our bodies; there is a period of civil war; if the soul has strength, it conquers and rules thereafter. — Charlotte Bronte

One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory. — Pico Iyer

'Rocky' represents the optimistic side of life, and 'Rambo' represents purgatory. — Sylvester Stallone

[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. "Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we're out of purgatory for the weekend."
"Maybe later," I murmur, still distracted by the day's previous events.
"So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested."
"Huh?" I say. — Jodi Picoult

The limitless jet-lag purgatory of Immigration and Baggage at Heathrow. — Monica Dickens

Since you always lived inside your own head, you were much better at seeing the truth about others than you ever were at seeing yourself. So you navigated your life with the help of others who held up mirrors for you. People praised your good qualities and criticized your bad habits, and these perspectives - often surprising to you - helped you to guide your life. So poorly did you know yourself that you were always surprised at how you looked in photographs or how you sounded on voice mail. In this way, much of your existence took place in the eyes, ears, and fingertips of others. And now that you've left the Earth, you are stored in scattered heads around the globe. Here in this Purgatory, all the people with whom you've ever come in contact are gathered. The scattered bits of you are collected, pooled, and unified. The mirrors are held up in front of you. Without the benefit of filtration, you see yourself clearly for the first time. And that is what finally kills you. — David Eagleman

A fair woman is a paradise to the eye, a purgatory to the purse,
and hell to the soul. — Elizabeth Grymeston

Is that why you do good deeds, Richie? To shorten your time in Purgatory?' 'Oh, honey,' he said, brushing lint from an orange sleeve. 'I'm going to hell. That's where the action is. — Michael Nava