John Clare Quotes

This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.

We are children of the eternity: But this world is an out-birth out of the eternal; and its palpability taketh its original in the anger; the eternal nature is its root.

No man can pass into eternity, for he is already in it.

But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

I look through the grave into heaven.

Eternity' is there, We say, as of a station. Meanwhile, he is so near, He joins me in my Ramble? Divides abode with me? No Friend have I that so persists As this Eternity.

To every instant there is a correspondence in something outside time. This world here and now cannot be followed by a Beyond, for the Beyond is eternal, hence it cannot be in temporal contact with this world here and now.

Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort.

The soul is not ruled by time and space. The soul is infinite. It blends with the One in infinity.

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.

The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple.

Look up here, I'm in heaven.

Let us rise above the things that pass away. Up above, the air is so pure. Jesus can hide Himself but we will find Him there.

What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.

Shall not this bygone Eden that we knew In our Eternal Life have shape and hue? For where Time is not shall not all Time be? In that calm breast whereto our souls are cleaving Shall we not find our loved ones beyond grieving About the hearth-stone of Eternity?

Hell is gone and heaven's here,there's nothing left for you to fear.

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely—flowers.

If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing.

time never stops, but does it end? and how many livesbefore take-off, before we find ourselves beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

Yea, when mortality dissolves, Shall I not meet thine hour unawed? My house eternal in the heavens Is lighted by the smile of God!

It was a quiet way - He asked if I was his - I made no answer of the tongue But answer of the eyes - And then He bore me on Before this mortal noise With swiftness, as of Chariots and distance, as of Wheels. This World did drop away As acres from the feet of one that leaneth from Balloon Upon an Ether Street. The Gulf behind was not, The Continents were new - Eternity was due. No Seasons were to us - It was not Night nor Morn - But Sunrise stopped upon the place And Fastened in Dawn.

We live our little life; but Heaven is above us and all around and close to us; and Eternity is before us and behind us; and suns and stars are silent witnesses and watchers over us. We are enfolded by Infinity.

Heaven-as you call it-is nowhere. Let's just put some space between the w and the h in that word and you'll see that heaven is now...here.

Love is the door to eternity.