quotations about Hell
Make no mistake: Hell is punishment--but it's not a punishing. It's not torture. The punishment of hell is separation from God, bringing shame, anguish, and regret. And because we will have both body and soul in the resurrected state, the misery experienced can be both mental and physical. But the pain that's suffered will be due to the sorrow from the final, ultimate, unending banishment from God, his kingdom, and the good life for which we were created in the first place. People in hell will deeply grieve all they've lost.
LEE STROBEL
The Case for Faith
If heaven is where people become fully human, then hell is the ultimate disintegration of what it means to be human.
SEAN MCDOWELL & JONATHAN MORROW
Is God Just a Human Invention
The devil, as a master of deceit, does everything he can to keep people from believing in the existence of a hell; but hell is a literal state of existence that will be the plight of all those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ.
TIM LAHAYE
Revelation Unveiled
Redemption can be found in hell itself if that's where you happen to be.
LIN JENSEN
Bad Dog!
[One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
letter to Colette O'Niel, Oct. 23, 1916
Just because your sins have landed you in Hell doesn't mean you shouldn't seek Grace.
EDWARD LEE
House Infernal
All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.
C. S. LEWIS
The Great Divorce
There's a lot of loose talk going around to the effect that Hell doesn't exist. It never seems to strike these gabby pundits that not to exist may be precisely the reality of Hell.
HUGH HOOD
Near Water
Heaven and Hell are, in my opinion, much like God: a feel-good idea that swims in the minds of people, but has little bearing in reality. It's also a nifty way to control people through fear.
ANONYMOUS
World Religions in a Nutshell
Hell is separated from heaven; for all who are in hell, when they lived in the world, were in the mere delights of the body and the flesh from the love of self and the world; but all who are in heaven, when they lived in the world, were in the delights of the soul and the spirit from love to the Lord and love toward the neighbor. Because these loves are opposite, therefore the heavens and the hells are so entirely separated, that a spirit who is in hell dares not raise the crown of his head, or even put forth a finger thence; for the moment he attempts it, he is racked and tortured.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
Heaven and its Wonders and Hell
Hell is the centre of evils and, as you know, things are more intense at their centres than at their remotest points.
JAMES JOYCE
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Perhaps the thought of going to hell doesn't alarm you, because you don't believe in it. That may be your belief, but if hell exists, your lack of belief won't make it go away. Standing on a freeway and saying, "I don't believe in trucks" won't make the 18-wheeler disappear.
KIRK CAMERON
Still Growing
I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Notes from the Underground
Hell is not evil; it's a place where evil gets punished. Hell is not pleasant, appealing, or encouraging. But Hell is morally good, because a good God must punish evil.
RANDY ALCORN
If God Is Good
There are more gluttons than drunkards in hell.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.
C. S. LEWIS
The Problem of Pain
This was hell then; it wasn't anything to worry about: it was just his own familiar room.
GRAHAM GREENE
Brighton Rock
Canst thou fly too fast from hell and damnation? Canst thou be too carefull to avoid those paths, which, though strewed with roses, lead down to the chambers of death? Whether is it better thy flesh should murmur, or thy soul should perish? O that knowing these terrors of the Lord, our whole life might be one constant flight from the wrath that is to come!
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On the Misery of the Damned", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jelly-like mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions upon millions of fetid carcasses massed together in the reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this, and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell.
JAMES JOYCE
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Gonzo Papers