A Quote by John McGahern

We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places. — © John McGahern
We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places.
Sometimes I think that the amount of time you live on earth is just an inverse reflection of how good you were in a previous existence. For example, infants who die from SIDs were actually great people when they were alive for real, so they get to go to heaven after a mere five weeks in purgatory. Meanwhile anyone Willard Scott ever congratulated for turning one hundred two was obviously a terrible individual who had many many previous sins to pay for and had to spend a century in his or her own unknown purgatory even though the person seemed perfectly wholesome in this particular world.
Even heaven would become hell if you were alone in it, or away from a loved one. And even if you were with your loved one, but in hell, eventually you would cry to have you and your loved one together in heaven. So to create your own heaven on earth, make sure you and your loved one are in a place you both LOVE, because what could be heaven for one, could be hell for the other.
There is a choice before us as people who live in a great world, so knit together that even America cannot stand quite outside it, or act as though it were situated somewhere on the moon! That choice is a choice - let me put it quite brutally - between heaven and hell. ... But it is not a choice between a heaven or a hell beyond the grave; it is a choice between making heaven or making hell on this side of the grave, and in this world, here and now.
Think of Jonathan Edwards who thundered the terrors of God and what Hell was like until men grasped their seats and hung on to them, fearing they were falling into Hell itself. Men were moved by fear to escape damnation. That was believed to be Christianity. Why any coward wanted to keep out of Hell. He might not have had one idea in his soul of what was the real true earmark of Christianity.
The concept of 'purgatory' is in Catholic Church dogma, and most black people are not Catholic - mostly their Christian realities focus on heaven or hell. Purgatory is for the expiation of sin, the fact that you are there, and not in hell, means you'll eventually work your way to heaven. The experience of this play, 'Small oak tree', and its psychological architecture, relies on its knowledge of that. Many black people believe that this life, within itself, is a way to work out whatever obligations we have, in order to get to a better place.
Such is friendship, that through it we love places and seasons; for as bright bodies emit rays to a distance, and flowers drop their sweet leaves on the ground around them, so friends impart favor even to the places where they dwell. With friends even poverty is pleasant. Words cannot express the joy which a friend imparts; they only can know who have experienced. A friend is dearer than the light of heaven, for it would be better for us that the sun were exhausted than that we should be without friends.
Of all the inhabitants of the inferno, none but Lucifer knows that hell is hell, and the secret function of purgatory is to make of heaven an effective reality.
But although Australia was also involved in the Vietnam conflict, I can remember my dad telling us that if we were in Australia, we wouldn't be drafted until we were 20.
The advertising men made it clear that there were two ways of looking at ideas in a war against fascism. Those of us who were working on the project believed ideas were to be fought for; the advertising men believed they were to be sold. The audience, those at home in wartime, were not 'citizens' or 'people.' They were 'customers.'
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.
All of us from The Waltons still love each other. I think were closer than some real families.
Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante's scheme, Limbo is to Hell
Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante's scheme, Limbo is to Hell.
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.
Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus? Would you follow him for the life, joy and fulfilment he gives you right now?
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