#afterlife

I don't believe in the afterlife, so I do think when somebody passes, it's worthy of note. ↗

— Harvey Fierstein

#believe #i #i do #note #passes

Endings are not always bad. Most times they're just beginnings in disguise. ↗

— Kim Harrison

#death #death

Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#death #eternity #experience #life #death

Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour--landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard... But after life. The slow pulling down of thick green stalks so that the cup of the flower, as it turns over, deluges one with purple and red light. Why, after all, should one not be born there as one is born here, helpless, speechless, unable to focus one's eyesight, groping at the roots of the grass, at the toes of the Giants? ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#life #life

When I was ten all I knew was that I hated the weird words used to describe whatever it was that was wrong with my brother—to this day I think it all happened because he was overtaken by evil spirits that got loose in that haunted house ride at the carnival that summer. It’s easier for me to make sense of it that way than it is for me to face the other way—reality. And yet, those evil spirits that were unleashed—be they fake entities from a stupid carnival ride, or cruel malevolencies from dark spiritual chasms of our universe—have stayed with me all these years ↗

— Tim Cummings

#afterlife #astrology #brothers #children-of-celebrities #class-struggle

I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That's what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church. ↗

— Frank McCourt

#any #church #contempt #down #get

The young boys I speak with say to me: Why would I want to live in this world - where they rely on charity, dry pieces of bread and water, where they are subjected to harsh treatment, when they can be free and be the envy of their colleagues in the afterlife. They are only too eager to sign on the dotted line and join the ranks of the Taliban. ↗

— Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

#bread #charity #colleagues #dotted #dry

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? ↗

— N.T. Wright

#communion-of-saints #paradise #prayer #praying-for-the-dead #purgatory

I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#afterlife #am #conditions #ego #eternally

Not only are there no happy endings,' she told him, 'there aren't even any endings. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#religion