John McGahern Quotes

I know for a fact that Heaven and Hell are here on Earth.

All that seems earth is hell or heaven.

I believe in a packed Heaven and an empty Hell.

If I were a Roman Catholic, I should turn a heretic, in sheer desperation, because I would rather go to heaven than go to purgatory.

Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken

I just disagree so much with the way the Catholic Church says things like, 'If you're not a good person, you'll die and go to Hell; there's a purgatory there...' If I was talking with a Holy Ghost, it would scare the living Hell out of me.

I don't think there's a petty system of heaven and hell. The love of God is much more forgiving. I'm not a believer in a wrathful God at all.

For Jesus, heaven and hell were present realities. Ways of living we can enter into here and now. He talked very little of the life beyond this one.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.

Moreover, no one is judged from the natural man, thus not so long as he lives in the natural world, for man is then in a natural body; but everyone is judged in the spiritual man, and therefore when he comes into the spiritual world, for man is then in a spiritual body.

That all who have ever been born men from the beginning of creation, and are deceased, are either in heaven or in hell, follows from those things which have been said and shown in the preceding article, namely, that Heaven and Hell are from the human race.

I'm going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell.

One of the fascinating things about researching Heaven and Hell is, of course, the fact that there are so few descriptions of Heaven, because most people can't really explain what it would be like beyond a couple of sentences, whereas Hell is quite often personal.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. 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.

The life of the hereafter is the outcome of all this world.

What is of the nature of spirit and soul must be gleaned from facts belonging to the spirit and soul; we shall then know that in the living thinking which is liberated from the will, a life-germ has been discerned which passes through the gate of death, goes through the spiritual world after death, and afterwards returns again to earthly life.

I've never been much to believe that my Creator will judge me or anyone at their final days. I don't really know if I believe in going to Heaven or Hell.

Some people think they should go to Heaven but not have to die to get there. Sorry, but that's simply not how it works.

I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life -- a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it -- filled me with a greater terror than the concept of extinction.

Earth is a in-between world touched by both Heaven and Hell. Earth leads directly into Heaven or directly into Hell, affording a choice between the two. The best of life on Earth is a glimpse of Heaven; the worst of life is a glimpse of Hell.

Heaven is real and hell is real, and eternity is but a breath away.

There is an essential difference between the decease of the godly and the death of the ungodly. Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous as a summons to his Father's palace. To the sinner it is an execution, to the saint an undressing from his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the King of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors, the commencement of glory.

We in Purgatory sing fondly of Hell.

To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is 'remains.'