“Me miserable! which way shall I flie
Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?
Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.”
“Emotional energy has got to go somewhere, and self-loathing is a powerful emotion. Turned inwards, it becomes our personal hells: addiction, obsession, compulsion, depression, violent relationships, illness. Projected outward it becomes our collective hells: violence, war, crime, oppression. But it’s all the same thing. Hell has many mansions too.”
“Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of heaven. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell.”
“THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY,
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN,
THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST.
JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER;
MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY,
THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.
BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.
These words – their aspect was obscure – I read
inscribed above a gateway”
“The shepherds opened the door and told them to look in. They looked in and it was very dark and smoky. From within the darkness they also thought they heard the rumbling sound of fire accompanied by tormented cries. And the smell of brimstone wafted from the door. Christian turned to the shepherds and asked, ‘What does this mean?’ The shepherds told them, ‘This is a byway to hell, where hypocrites enter in.‘”
“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”
“I was just getting ready to stick my tongue out at them; but then I thought about what Miss Franny said, about war being hell, and I thought about what Gloria Dump said, about not judging them too hard. And so I just waved instead.”
“THROUGH me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon ye who enter here.”
“As in large troops And multitudinous, when winter reigns, The starlings on their wings are borne abroad; So bears the tyrannous gust those evil souls. On this side and on that, above, below, It drives them: hope of rest to solace them Is none, nor e’en of milder pang.”
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire ... you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.”
“Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do.”
“It would be a wonder, if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here in ... this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before to-morrow morning.”
“In my dreams, I was always free. I was happy, and I was with him. (...) It was always heaven like this with Trace. My own piece of paradise within the burning inferno.”
“Stranger fiends hide here in human guise
than reside in the valleys of Hell.
But goodness, kindness and love arise
in the heart of the poor beast, as well.”
“We make Hell real; we stoke its fires.
And in its flames our hope expires.
Heaven, too, is merely our creation.
We can grant ourselves our own salvation.
All that’s required is imagination.”
“Or are their dark fears exaggerated?
Are these doom-criers addlepated?
Those who fear the coming of all Hells
are those who should be feared themselves”
“Hell waits in a doctor’s office,
tapping his shoe against a loose strip of carpet,
holding a magazine in front of his face,
trying to look professional,
whilst eyeing the children’s toys.”
“I am so sick of you stealing my joy. But that’s changing too. My joy doesn’t come from my friends, it doesn’t come from my job, it doesn’t even come from my husband. My joy is found in Jesus, and just in case you forgot, He has already defeated you. So go back to hell where you belong and leave my family alone!”
“Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”
“That is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, “we have never lived anywhere except in heaven,’ and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”
“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
Or you don’t.”
“I didn’t want to be in hell, even for a moment. I sure as hell wasn’t going there just to spit in the face of the Prince of Darkness, whoever he might be!”
“No, Hell wasn’t anything to do with places, Hell was all to do with people. Maybe Hell was people. […]
No place was Hell, no place could be Hell. It’s the people calling it Hell, that’s the only thing that made it so.”
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.”