Addison Joseph 1672-1719

‘A Song for St Cecilia's Day'

Music, the greatest good that mortals know
And all of heaven we have below.

Alain-Fournier (Henri Alban) 1886-1914

Le Grand Meaulnes

How can a man who has once strayed into
Heaven ever hope to make terms with the earth!

Barrie J. M. 1860-1937

Heaven for climate, hell for company.

Berlin Irving 1888-1989

Top Hat ‘Cheek-to-Cheek'

Heaven - I'm Heaven - And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak;
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
When we're out together dancing cheek-to-cheek.

The Bilbe

New Testament: St Matthew ch.18 v.3

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

The Bilbe

New Testament: St Matthew ch.24 v.35

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not away.

Blake William 1757-1827

‘Auguries of Innocence'

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.

Browne Sir Thomas 1605-1682

The Garden of Cyrus

The quincunx of heaven runs low, and ‘tis time to close the five ports of knowledge.

Browning Robert 1812- 1889

‘In a Balcony'

A man can have but one life and one death,
One heaven, one hell.

Bunyan John 1628-1888

The Pilgrim's Progress

Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the gates of Heaven.

Byron Lord 1788-1824

‘She Walks in Beauty'

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Congreve William 1670-1729

The Mourning Bride

Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned.

Defoe Daniel 1660-1731

The True-Born Englishman

In their religion they are so uneven,
That each one goes his own by-way to heaven.

Dickinson Emily 1830-1886

‘My Life closed twice before its close'

Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Elstow Friar

(when threated with drawning by Henry VIII)

With thanks to God we know the way to heaven, to be as ready by water as by land, and therefore we care not which way we go.

Fromm Erich 1900-1980

I think if you ask people what their concept of heaven is, they would say, if they are honest, that it is a big department store, with new things every week - all the money to buy them, and maybe a little more than the neighbours.

Gilbert Sir Humphrey c.1537-1583

Third and Last Volume of the Voyages
We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!

Green Russell

Heaven is the place where the donkey finally catches up with his carrot: hell is the eternity while he waits for it.

Haldane J.B.S. 1892-1964

Possible Worlds and Other Essays

Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose ... I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.

Housman A. E. 1859-1936

Last Poems

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

Jones Sir William 1746-1794

(lines substituted in ‘Six hours in sleep')

Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven,
Ten to the world allot, and all to Heaven.

Jonson Ben c.1573-1637

Catiline his Conspiracy

PEOPLE: The Voice of Cato is the voice of Rome.
CATO: The voice of Rome is the consent of Heaven!

Kant Immanuel 1724-1804

Critique of Practical Reason

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.

Keats John 1795-1821

‘To one who has been long in city pent'
To one who has been long in city pent,
‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven.

La Fontaine Jean de 1621-1695

Fables ‘Le Chartier Embourbé'

Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera.
Help yourself, and heaven will help you.

Lamartine Alphonse de 1790-1869

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.

Langland William c.1330-1400

The Vison of Piers Plowman

For if hevene be on this erthe, and ese to any soule,
It is in cloistre or in scole.

Longton Stephen c.1150-1228

The ‘Golden Sequence' for Whit Sunday

Come, Holy Spirit, and send out from heaven the beam of your light.

Lao-Tsu c.604-c.531 BC

Tao-Tê-Ching

Heaven and Earth are not ruthful;
To them the Ten Thousand Things are but as straw dogs.

Lee Nathaniel c.1653-1692

The Rival Queens

He speaks the kindest words, and looks such things,
Vows with so much passion, swears with so much grace.
That ‘tis a kind of heaven to be deluded by him.

Lennon John 1940-1980

‘Imagine'

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
Living for today.

Lessing G. E. 1729-1781

Minna von Barnhelm

One single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer.

Lodge Jr. Henry Cabot 1850-1924

This organization (United Nations) is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created
to take you to heaven.

Lyly John c.1554-1606

Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on earth.

McNabb Vincent

There are no short cuts to Heaven, only the ordinary way of ordinary things.

Marlowe Christopher 1564-1593

Doctor Faustus

Hell hath no limits nor is circumscribed
In one self place, where we are is Hell,
And to be short, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.

Milton John 1608-1674

‘Il Penseroso'

There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.

Milton John 1608-1674

‘On the Morning of Christ's Nativity'

It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born-child
All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to him
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great master so to sympathize.

Milton John 1608-1674

Paradise Lost

The will
And high permission of all-ruling heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation.

Milton John 1608-1674

Paradise Lost

Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
Said then the lost archangel, this the seat
That we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light?

Milton John 1608-1674

Paradise Lost

Farewell, happy fields
Where joy ever dwells: hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

Milton John 1608-1674

Paradise Lost

Warring in heaven against heaven's matchless king.

Milton John 1608-1674

Paradise Lost

What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?

Milton john 1608-1674

Paradise Lost

Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there; be lowly wise:
Think only what concerns thee and thy being.

Milton john 1608-1674

Paradise Lost

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st
Live well, how lonhg or short permit to heaven.

Milton John 1608-1674

Paradise Lost

In me is no delay; with thee to go,
Is to stay here; without thee here to stay,
Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me
Art all things under heaven, all places thou,
Who for my wilful crime art banished hence.

More Sir Thomas 1478-1535

Is not this house [the Tower of London] as nigh heaven as my own?

More Sir Thomas 1478-1535

We may not look at our pleasure to go to heaven in feather-beds; it is not the way.

Nerval Gérard de 1808-1855

Les Chimères ‘Le Christ aux Oliviers'

God is dead! Heaven is empty - Weep, children, you no longer have a father.

Newbolt Sir Henry 1862-1938

‘Drake's Drum'

‘Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powder's runnin' low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port o' Heaven,
An' drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago.'
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady'
Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well?

Proverbs and Sayings

Chinese

If heaven made him, earth can find some use for him.

Scott F.R.

The world is my country,
The human race is my race.
The spirit of man is my god,
The future of man is my heaven.

Scott Sir Walter 1771-1832

The Lay of the Last Minstrel
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

Hamlet

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

Hamlet

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Shaw George Bernard 1856-1950

The philosopher is Nature's pilot - and there you have our difference;
to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

Shelley Percy Bysshe 1792-1822

‘To a Skylark'

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Smith Edgar 1857-1938

‘Heaven Will Protect the Working-Girl'

You may tempt the upper classes
With you villainous demi-tasses,
But; Heaven will protect a working-girl!

Southey Robert 1774-1843

It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions. They have their place in heaven also.

Sparrow John 1906-1992

Epitaph for Maurice Bowra

Without you, Heaven would be too dull to bear,
And Hell would not be Hell if you are there.

Stevenson Robert Louis 1850-1894

Songs of Travel ‘The Vagabond'

Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I seek, the heaven above
And the road below me.

Awift Jonathan 1667-1745

Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Swinburne Algernon Charles 1837-1909

‘Atalanta in Calydon'

Maiden, and mistress of the months and stars
Now folded in the flowerless fields of heaven.

Thomson James 1700-1748

The Seasons ‘Summer'

O'er heaven and earth, far as the ranging eye
Can sweep, a dazzling deluge reigns; and all
From pole to pole is undistinguished blaze.

Twain Mark 1835-1910

If I cannot smoke cigars in heaven, I shall not go.

Walton Izaak 1593-1683

Of this blest man, let his just praise be given,
Heaven was in him, before he was in Heaven.

Williams William Carlos 1883-1963

‘To Ford Madox Ford in Heaven'

Is it any better in heaven, my friend Ford,
Than you found it in Provence?

Wordsworth William 1770-1850

‘The French Revolution, as it Appeared ...'

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

Heaven quotes, heaven sayings