The Quotations Archive
The Anti Cardinal's Ecumenical Quotes
She Who Must Not Be Named asked me to compile a list of quotes on death, heaven and hell from my big stack 'o' quotes. I started doing that but found myself having far too much fun, and decided to expand to compiling a list of quotes that I think are relevant to the religious bits of Salamandertron. If you find yourself disagreeing with more than half of these quotes you may wish to reconsider your membership of Salamandertron, perhaps for the Church of England, Catholicism or Zoroastrianism.
"It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
- Woody Allen
"I feel no pain dear mother now,
But oh, I am so dry!
O take me to a brewery,
And leave me there to die."
Anonymous
"When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin."
- J. P. Donleavy
"It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time."
- Samuel Johnson
"Die, my dear doctor! That's the last thing I shall do!"
- Lord Palmerston
"Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when."
- Philip Roth
"Dear me! I must be turning into a god."
- Vespasian (A.D. 9-79), Roman emperor. Last words
"Others greater than I have already eulogized you, but none of them ever had the pleasure I had to feel the caresses of your warm, soft hands, to merit your warm embrace that was reserved only for us, to see your half-smile that always told us so much, that same smile which is no longer, frozen in the grave with you."
"It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly."
- Margaret Mead
"Hell is other people."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
"Well, I don't know, but I've been told
The streets in heaven are lined with gold.
I ask you how things could get much worse
If the Russians happen to get up there first;
Wowee! pretty scary!"
- Bob Dylan
"Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven."
- G. C. Lichtenberg
"An apology for the Devil-it must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books."
- Samuel Butler
"I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff."
- Aleister Crowley
"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."
- John Milton
"The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman."
- William Shakespeare
"We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. A person who has for untold centuries maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must
be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order."
- Mark Twain
"The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore."
- H. L. Mencken
"It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
If you have any additional quotations you think capture the spirit of Salamandertron perfectly, salamandertron@hotmail.com is the place to send them.