This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do... For me, the conception of hell lies in two words: “too late.”
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.
If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness, a horrid thought!
Anarchy | Hell | Law | Madness | Memory | Nature | Reason | Thought | Understanding | Will |
Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us.
If there is a hell upon earth it is to be found in a melancholy man's heart.
Earth | Heart | Hell | Man | Melancholy |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, and the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone... the final desolation of solitude in the phantasmal world of imagination, shuffling memories, and desires.
Desolation | Hell | Imagination | Nothing | Solitude | World |
Theologia Germanica, aka Theologia Deutsch or Teutsch NULL
Nothing burns in hell but the self.
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
What is hell? Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone.
When I cannot be forced, I am fooled out of my integrity. He cannot constrain if I do not consent. If I do but keep possession, all the posse of hell cannot violently eject me; but I cowardly surrender to his summons. Thus there needs no more to be my undoing but myself.
C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family
The safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
Hell |