Purgatory Quotes

Politics is the art of promising heaven and delivering purgatory, and claiming hero status for saving your country from hell.

Bangambiki Habyarimana

God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, as Reenie used to say. Could it be that Myra is my designated guardian angel? Or is she instead a foretaste of Purgatory? And how do you tell the difference?

Margaret Atwood

The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection, from the present on to the future. This is why purgatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story. It is where we are now. If we are Christians, if we believe in the risen Jesus as Lord, if we are baptized members of his body, then we are passing right now through the sufferings which form the gateway to life.

On Earth, Liz was constantly occupied with studying and finding a college and a career and all those other things that the adults in her life deemed terribly important. Since she had died, everything she was doing on Earth had seemed entirely meaningless. From Liz's point of view, the question of what her life would be was now definitively answered. The story of her life is short and pointless: There once was a girl who got hit by a car and died. The end.

Gabrielle Zevin

I thought that this must be what purgatory was like. Can't go forward. Can't go back. Awaiting some official judgment.

In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell.

Ursula K Le Guin

We must have taken a wrong turn turning somewhere.""Where, Purgatory?" said Dozy. "We're in Hell.

Then again, she could actually be dead, and this place was purgatory or Hell. She settled on purgatory because she always believed Hell would not offer rewards for good behavior. Limbo was probably the best answer. She was awaiting judgment, and if she passed her tests or “sessions,” she could cross over to the real afterlife. It was a strange concept for her because she was not Catholic. She was some variant of Protestant--something that did not believe in Limbo but believed in fainting and speaking in tongues. Bridget had not been to church since her grandmother died because the young woman refused to accept the idea that One-Day-a-Week Christians were better than those who failed to attend church at all. Why go to a house of worship to listen to the high and mighty talk about what people in town did with their week? In Bridget’s eyes, this concept of judgment was entirely un-Christian. Furthermore, she had lots of gay friends, and she believed they should be allowed to marry. That was a concept with which members of her congregation disagreed. Maybe this was purgatory, and she was being tested for her support of homosexuality or her lack of faith. She really had no idea.

Mephistopheles: Within the bowels of these elements,Where we are tortured and remain forever.Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribedIn one self place, for where we are is hell,And where hell is must we ever be.And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves,And every creature shall be purified,All places shall be hell that is not heaven.

Christopher Marlowe

The Enlightenment, finally, invented progressive 'history' as an inner-worldly purgatory in order to develop the conditions of possibility of a perfected 'society'. This provided the required setting for the aggressive social theology of the Modern Age to drive out the political theology of the imperial eras. What was the Enlightenment in its deep structure if not an attempt to translate the ancient rhyme on learning and suffering - mathein pathein - into a collective and species-wide phenomenon? Was its aim not to persuade the many to expose themselves to transitional ordeals that would precede the great optimization of all things?

Peter Sloterdijk

I believe - I daily find it proved - that we can get nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, except out of purifying flame, or through strengthening peril. We err; we fall; we are humbled - then we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out of the gilded cup of vice, or from the beggar's wallet of avarice; we are sickened, degraded; everything good in us rebels against us; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our bodies; there is a period of civil war; if the soul has strength, it conquers and rules thereafter.

Charlotte Brontë

Open up your Mind Rockin' Minds to the Cold Hard Reality that is my Songs & Dreams.

Gemini Rising Rockin' Machine

In particular, we must take account of the well-known and striking saying of Jesus to the dying brigand beside him, recorded by Luke (23.43). 'Today,' he said, 'you will be with me in paradise.' 'Paradise' is not the final destination; it is a beautiful resting place on the way there. But notice. If there is anyone in the New Testament to whom we might have expected the classic doctrine of purgatory to apply, it would be this brigand. He had no time for amendment of life; no doubt he had all kinds of sinful thoughts and desires in what was left of his body. All the standard arguments in favour of purgatory apply to him. And yet Jesus assures him of his place in paradise, not in a few days or weeks, not if his friends say a lot of prayers and masses for him, but 'today.

You are afraid to suffer, but it were better to thank God for it, since the more you undergo down here, the less you will endure above. Grief is a portion of one's heritage taken in advance from Purgatory.

Saint Lydwine of Schiedam

Purgatory surpasses heaven and hell in poetry, because it represents a future and the others do not.

Francois Rene De Chateaubriand

To change her mind is a woman's prerogative, to change his mind is a man's purgatory.

History will be erased in the universal purgatory.

Dejan Stojanovic

FEAR IS PURGATORYI have died many timesAnd my episodes of deathGave me the powerOver the greatest fearsThe fear of lifeThe fear of self

Dauglas Dauglas

How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.

Speak peace unto the world and good souls will stand.

L.T. Hill