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Afterlife Quotes

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Afterlife Quotes

“Most people would probably call me a ghost. I am, after all, dead. But I don't think of myself that way. It wasn't so long ago that I was alive, you see. I was only eighteen. I had my whole life in front of me. Now I suppose you could say I have all of eternity before me. I'm not sure exactly what that means yet. I'm told everything's going to be fine. But I have to wonder what I would have done with my life, who I might have been. That's what saddens me most about dying--that I'll never know.”

“There was a subtle shift in the mood in the room. Not exactly hostile, Tempy felt, more of one of accusation. It was impolite in this company to demonstrate how much the world had moved on since one had died. It was said that Hell was seeing the world pass before you while you could do nothing about it. Not only had she reminded George of his passing, and his inability to become integrated into polite society due to the language barrier, but also that he had lived a sad life.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” she groaned, jerking up from the reclining seat as the tears exploded. She felt as devastated as if she were still in the body of the grizzled fighting man. Convulsing sobs of remorse tortured her energy body and she rocked it like a baby, holding her midsection, feeling as if her stomach would turn inside out. She struggled to speak, gulping in habit for air that didn’t exist, which would have been useless to her energy lungs anyway. She had to know. “Who? Who…was…he?” she managed in spurts. “The boy—” “You know the answer already, don’t you?” Coriskancsia replied gently.”

“Conner raised an eyebrow. 'Who told you that?' 'Well,' she said, not knowing how to describe what she experienced. 'Um . . . a moth did.' Conner squinted at her and his mouth fell open. He was expecting a much better answer than that. 'A moth told you?' 'Yes -- but it wasn't a regular moth, it was more like an angel.' 'An angel moth?' 'Well, it came from somewhere in the stars. I think Grandma sent it.' 'Grandma sent you an angel moth from outer space?' 'Kind of! Anyway, the moth took me to a forest and then turned into a bunch of orbs that re-created a memory -- stop looking at me like that, Conner!”

“El tiempo destruye todo cuanto crea, y el fin de toda secuencia temporal es, para la entidad implicada en ella, la muerte en una u otra forma. La muerte es enteramente trascendida solo cuando es trascendido el tiempo; la inmortalidad está reservada a la conciencia que ha atravesado lo temporal y se halla en lo intemporal.”

“Love knows no barriers, no distance. It makes you dance as if in a trance, And catches you up when you are down. It makes you draw a smile from a frown, And embarks you in a river when you fall, And most of its grace, it embraces us all!”

“When you get to the Food Hall, you eat and you drink. You're starving by the time you arrive, so you pretty much stuff your face with everything. Pomegranate pips. Mushroom caps. Blood-red wine. Soda pop. Cinnabuns. Spicy Girl rolls. This thing you had once on vacation with your parents, at a bed-and-breakfast that hasn't been there for a decade. This other thing you couldn't have eaten while you were alive, even if you wanted to, because the restaurant that makes it won't open for years. That's the cool thing about the Food Hall. It serves, like, everything. Anything. Whatever you want. Whatever you feel. It's full of coffee shops and grocery stores and restaurants. There's bodegas and clam bakes and a whole island of cheese. Imagined places to hit up for imaginary meals. Carbon copies of your favorites from the Living world. It's endless. All-you-can-eat. Edible Eden, basically. And it's all there to feed you because that's the whole reason the Food Hall exists--- to nourish the spirits of the Afterlife. To help us get full so we can move On to our next lives.”

“Since both the departed saints and we ourselves are in Christ, we share with them in the 'communion of saints.' They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist they are there with us, along with the angels and archangels. Why then should we not pray for and with them? The reason the Reformers and their successors did their best to outlaw praying for the dead was because that had been so bound up with the notion of purgatory and the need to get people out of it as soon as possible. Once we rule out purgatory, I see no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead and every reason why we should - not that they will get out of purgatory but that they will be refreshed and filled with God's joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God?”

“In the Jewish hypogæum and subterranean cell at Rome, was little observable beside the variety of lamps and frequent draughts of Anthony and Jerome we meet with thigh-bones and death's-heads; but the cemeterial cells of ancient Christians and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories; not declining the flourishes of cypress, palms, and olive, and the mystical figures of peacocks, doves, and cocks; but iterately affecting the portraits of Enoch, Lazarus, Jonas, and the vision of Ezekiel, as hopeful draughts, and hinting imagery of the resurrection, which is the life of the grave, and sweetens our habitations in the land of moles and pismires.”

“I have drunk the night and swallowed the stars. I am dancing with abandon and singing with rapture. There is not a thing I do not love. There is not a person I have not forgiven. I feel a universe of love. I feel a universe of light. Tonight, I am with old friends and we are returning home. The moon is our witness.”

“Love in this life is expanded by our anticipation of the next life. Those who love under God are never satisfied with small love, or love bound by the flaws of human emotion. Those who love under God dream of another life where they can experience it and live it in God's perfect form, so they seek to build it in this life as much as possible.”

“Afterlife is other people (Soul Biology, Sonnet 2476) Like many streams finally meet in the sea, we are all born of nature, and ultimately disperse into nature, our identity, our memory, emotions, everything - then the only place we exist is in the memories of other people, whose lives we might have influenced in some way. There is no transference of soul, the way our primitive ancestors believed; soul is just electrochemical response of uniquely individual makeup of organic matter, once that individual makeup breaks down, the individual soul simply vanishes. Your soul disperses as your body does, but not your role in other people's lives. Entity can be wiped out, but not existence, existence that has ignited a few lives.”

“There's no love waiting for you. There's something massive, and powerful, you can feel it . . . but I still don't know how to accurately describe how you feel it, because it's more than just knowledge. It would be physical, too, if you had a body, except you don't. Or maybe it's a different kind of body, or maybe you just haven't yet shaken off the memory of the one you had, so it feels like you're still subject to the same expectations of gravity and pain. Even though there's no love, you are wanted there. The main thing you're aware of is this pervading sense of greed. You're like one gold coin in a vault full of them, spilling over with them. You're there to be hoarded. I don't know why, I couldn't tell you why. Maybe it only wants you because it can have you. Or maybe it'll have some other use for you eventually, and for now you're in some kind of holding pen. But . . . the sense of claustrophobia, and betrayal . . . they're just devastating. You can feel that all around you, too . . . like a scream that got so loud you can't even hear it anymore, it just rips through you like an electric current . . . And the only reason you know it's not Hell, or that maybe Heaven and Hell are the same thing, is because you can hear the singing, for lack of a better word, because it's not songs, or structured. But it's beautiful. Sure—it's Heaven, right? It seems to come from all around you, but it's far away at the same time. Maybe it won't be so bad, you're thinking, if I get to listen to this. But pretty soon, you realize it's not for you. And a little while after that, you start to notice the strain in it. Like that tone in a hostage's voice when he's reading a statement about how well his captors are treating him, except he's reading it with a gun at his head. And then you realize the worst thing of all: What you're hearing are the ones that have learned to beg . . .”

“Who dare glory in his own good works?' I reflected. 'From one faint spark such as this, it would be possible to set the whole earth on fire.' We often think we receive graces and are divinely illumined by means of brilliant candles. But from whence comes their light? From the prayers, perhaps, of some humble, hidden soul, whose inward shining is not apparent to human eyes; a soul of unrecognised virtue and, in her own sight, of little value—a dying flame. "What mysteries will yet be unveiled to us! I have often thought that perhaps I owe all the graces with which I am laden, to some little soul whom I shall know only in Heaven. "It is God's Will that in this world souls shall dispense to each other, by prayer, the treasures of Heaven, in order that when they reach their Everlasting Home they may love one another with grateful hearts, and with an affection far in excess of that which reigns in the most perfect family on earth. "There no looks of indifference will meet us, because all the Saints will be mutually indebted to each other. No envious glances will be cast, for the happiness of each one of the Blessed will be the happiness of all. With the Doctors of the Church we shall be like unto Doctors; with the Martyrs, like unto Martyrs; with the Virgins, like unto Virgins; and just as the members of one family are proud one of the other, so without the least jealousy shall we take pride in our brothers and sisters. "When we see the glory of the great Saints, and know that through the secret working of Providence we have contributed to it, who knows whether the joy we shall feel will not be as intense, perhaps sweeter, than the happiness they themselves possess? "And do you not think that the great Saints, on their side, seeing what they owe to all little souls, will love them with a love beyond compare? The friendships of Paradise will be both sweet and full of surprise, of this I am certain. The familiar friend of an Apostle, or of a great Doctor of the Church, may be a shepherd boy, and a simple little child may be united in closest intimacy with a Patriarch. . . . I long to enter that Kingdom of Love!”

“The Buddha challenged the idea of an immutable soul. He said nothing about the mutable soul, and its survival, though his successors in most streams of Buddhism have had a lot to say on this subject. For all their words, the question of what happens when one dies remains a mystery.”

“Yes. I'm not unhappy about becoming old. I'm not unhappy about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me and life is emptied. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. And it's like a dream life. I am reading a biography of Samuel Palmer, which is written by a woman in England. I can't remember her name. And it's sort of how I feel now, when he was just beginning to gain his strength as a creative man and beginning to see nature. But he believed in God, you see, and in heaven, and he believed in hell. Goodness gracious, that must have made life much easier. It's harder for us nonbelievers. But, you know, there's something I'm finding out as I'm aging that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they're beautiful. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. You know, I don't think I'm rationalizing anything. I really don't. This is all inevitable and I have no control over it.”

“Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live; and unto such as consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to die, which makes us amazed at those audacities that durst be nothing and return into their chaos again. Certainly such spirits as could contemn death, when they expected no better being after, would have scorned to live, had they known any.”

“How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of dying! This world is pleasant–it would be dreary to be called from it, and to have to go who knows where?" And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell: and for the first time it recoiled, baffled; and for the first time glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all around an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point where it stood–the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth: and it shuddered at the thought of tottering , and plunging amid that chaos.”

“In her eyes Henry was always moving, and causing others to move, until the ends of the earth met. But in time he must get too tired to move, and settle down. What next? The inevitable word. The release of the soul to its appropriate Heaven. Would they meet in it? Margaret believed in immortality for herself. An eternal future had always seemed natural to her. And Henry believed in it for himself. Yet, would they meet again? Are there not rather endless levels beyond the grave, as the theory that he had censured teaches? And his level, whether higher or lower, could it possibly be the same as hers?”