heaven

1.

The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

- Shaw, George Bernard

2.

INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table. INSURANCE AGENT: My dear sir, that is a fine house -- pray let me insure it. HOUSE OWNER: With pleasure. Please make the annual premium so low that by the time when, according to the tables of your actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have paid you considerably less than the face of the policy. INSURANCE AGENT: O dear, no -- we could not afford to do that. We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more. HOUSE OWNER: How, then, can _I_ afford _that_? INSURANCE AGENT: Why, your house may burn down at any time. There was Smith's house, for example, which -- HOUSE OWNER: Spare me -- there were Brown's house, on the contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which -- INSURANCE AGENT: Spare _me_! HOUSE OWNER: Let us understand each other. You want me to pay you money on the supposition that something will occur previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence. In other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last so long as you say that it will probably last. INSURANCE AGENT: But if your house burns without insurance it will be a total loss. HOUSE OWNER: Beg your pardon -- by your own actuary's tables I shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I would otherwise have paid to you -- amounting to more than the face of the policy they would have bought. But suppose it to burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are based. If I could not afford that, how could you if it were insured? INSURANCE AGENT: O, we should make ourselves whole from our luckier ventures with other clients. Virtually, they pay your loss. HOUSE OWNER: And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their losses? Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before they have paid you as much as you must pay them? The case stands this way: you expect to take more money from your clients than you pay to them, do you not? INSURANCE AGENT: Certainly; if we did not -- HOUSE OWNER: I would not trust you with my money. Very well then. If it is _certain_, with reference to the whole body of your clients, that they lose money on you it is _probable_, with reference to any one of them, that _he_ will. It is these individual probabilities that make the aggregate certainty. INSURANCE AGENT: I will not deny it -- but look at the figures in this pamph -- HOUSE OWNER: Heaven forbid! INSURANCE AGENT: You spoke of saving the premiums which you would otherwise pay to me. Will you not be more likely to squander them? We offer you an incentive to thrift. HOUSE OWNER: The willingness of A to take care of B's money is not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you command esteem. Deign to accept its expression from a Deserving Object.

- Ambrose Bierce

3.

BAPTISM, n. A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever. It is performed with water in two ways -- by immersion, or plunging, and by aspersion, or sprinkling. But whether the plan of immersion Is better than simple aspersion Let those immersed And those aspersed Decide by the Authorized Version, And by matching their agues tertian. G.J.

- Ambrose Bierce

4.

Cranes carry this heavy mystical baggage. They're icons of fidelity and happiness. The Vietnamese believe cranes cart our souls up to heaven on our wings.

- Mitchell Burgess

5.

Earth's crammed with heaven.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

6.

The principles now planted in thy bosom will grow, and one day reach maturity; and in that maturity thou wilt find thy heaven or thy hell.

- David Thomas

7.

...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line."

- Tom Robbins

8.

Some pray to marry the man they love, my prayer will somewhat vary; I humbly pray to Heaven above that I love the man I marry.

- Stokes, Rose Pastor

9.

I have no fear of photography as long as it cannot be used in heaven and in hell.

- Munch, Edvard

10.

If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Proverb Discourse was deemedMan’s noblest attribute, And written words the glory of his hand; Then followed Printing with enlarged command For thought—dominion vast and absolute For spreading truth, and making love expand. Now prose and verse sunk into disrepute Must lacquey a dumb Art that best can suit The taste of this once-intellectual Land. A backward movement surely have we here, From manhood,—back to childhood; for the age— Back towards caverned life’s first rude career. A vaunt this vile abuse of pictured page! Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear Nothing? Heaven keep us from a lower stage!

- William Wordsworth

11.

BERENICE'S HAIR, n. A constellation (_Coma Berenices_) named in honor of one who sacrificed her hair to save her husband. Her locks an ancient lady gave Her loving husband's life to save; And men -- they honored so the dame -- Upon some stars bestowed her name. But to our modern married fair, Who'd give their lords to save their hair, No stellar recognition's given. There are not stars enough in heaven. G.J.

- Ambrose Bierce

12.

It often happens that those of whom we speak least on earth are best known in heaven.

- Caussin, Nicolas

13.

Faith without works is like a bird without wings; though she may hop with her companions on earth, yet she will never fly with them to heaven.

- Beaumont, Francis

14.

Love is this divine ingredient. It alone describes what can be our perfect relationship to our Heavenly Father and our family and neighbors, and the means by which we accomplish His work.

- David B. Haight

15.

Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of Heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not enter into Heaven let him be ever so holy.

- Blake, William

16.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.

- Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

Thank Heaven, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it.

- Smith, Logan Pearsall

18.

Lay up your treasures in heaven where there is no depreciation.

19.

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

- Milton, John

20.

God owns heaven but He craves the earth.

- Sexton, Anne