47 Quotes About Hell

Hell has fascinated humanity for centuries, conjuring images of eternal fire, boundless suffering, and supernatural torment. From literary classics to modern musings, the concept of Hell continues to inspire profound reflection and creative expression. In this collection, we bring you 47 of the most thought-provoking quotes about Hell, each offering a unique perspective on the enigmatic realms of damnation, despair, and divine justice. Whether you view Hell as a metaphorical landscape or a literal future, these quotes will invite you to ponder the depths of human suffering and the mysterious nature of the afterlife. Dive in and explore the myriad interpretations of Hell through the words of great thinkers, writers, and philosophers.

1. “Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like.” - David Sedaris

2. “You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” - C.S. Lewis

3. “I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.” - Robert Frost

4. “You don't have to believe in Hell. All you need is to hear someone who really does, who believes in it this minute, today, the way people believe in 1685 — all you have to do is see his face, his voice when he says the word... and than you know that anyone who can imagine Hell has the power to make it real for other people.” - Peter S. Beagle

5. “Heaven might shine bright, but so do flames.” - Neal Shusterman

6. “Life is hell, at some point we all just have to get used to it.” - Alysha Speer

7. “Doorman: Good morning Mr. PeaknisMr. P.: Go to hell” - Rachel Caine

8. “She'd grown up believing in hell in an abstract nightmare way; but west Texas had given her something more concrete upon which to dread the afterlife.” - Cherie Priest

9. “Faustus, who embraced evil and shunned righteousness, became the foremost symbol of the misuse of free will, that sublime gift from God with its inherent opportunity to choose virtue and reject iniquity. “What shall a man gain if he has the whole world and lose his soul,” (Matt. 16: v. 26) - but for a notorious name, the ethereal shadow of a career, and a brief life of fleeting pleasure with no true peace? This was the blackest and most captivating tragedy of all, few could have remained indifferent to the growing intrigue of this individual who apparently shook hands with the devil and freely chose to descend to the molten, sulphuric chasm of Hell for all eternity for so little in exchange. It is a drama that continues to fascinate today as powerfully as when Faustus first disseminated his infamous card in the Heidelberg locale to the scandal of his generation. In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

10. “I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am.” - Arthur Rimbaud

11. “They believe themselves Lucifer's equals, Cain, all these pitiful little gnats. But there is only one that we have ever owned to be our superior. There is but one greater than us, and to him... to him we no longer speak.” - Neil Gaiman

12. “The blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful for them.” - Thomas Aquinas

13. “Let this hell be our heaven.” - Richard Matheson

14. “But there’s a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.” - John Green

15. “Because to live in a world in which no one is forgiven, where all are irredeemable, is the same as living in hell.” - Milan Kundera

16. “Once I was free in the shackles of sin:Free to be tempted, just bound to give in;Free to be captive to any desire;Free to eternally burn in hell’s fire.‘Til Someone bought me and called me His slave:Bound by commands I am free to obey;Captive by beauty I’m free to adore--Sentenced to sit at His feet evermore.” - John MacArthur

17. “Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so clear to me. If you care to imagine what any inadequate or cruel man might do, given unlimited power over a woman, then anything that you can bring yourself to suspect was what became routine in ESMA, the Navy Mechanics School that became the headquarters of the business. I talked to Dr. Emilio Mignone, a distinguished physician whose daughter Monica had disappeared into the precincts of that hellish place. What do you find to say to a doctor and a humanitarian who has been gutted by the image of a starving rat being introduced to his daughter's genitalia? Like hell itself the school was endorsed and blessed by priests, in case any stray consciences needed to be stilled.” - Christopher Hitchens

18. “The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.” - Christopher Hitchens

19. “You think You're frightening me with Your hell, don't You? You think Your hell is worse than mine.” - Dorothy Parker

20. “Long hair will send you to hell!” - Hidekaz Himaruya

21. “I've never done acid, finding it hard to go willingly to a place that could be frightening, hellish, and totally beyond my control. A place much like high school.” - Libba Bray

22. “God created heaven on earth but man created hell.” - Santosh Kalwar

23. “If there's hell below, we're all gonna go.” - Curtis Mayfield

24. “Both Heaven and Hell are retroactive, all of one's life will eventually be known to have been one or the other.” - Sheldon Vanauken

25. “What, in all very seriousness, the hell was going on?” - Jeff Lindsay

26. “I am fashionably unimpressed with the material world. I am moved by the beauty of aspiration, and I hope that I can elevate myself to the standards I have imposed on others.” - Mike Corbett

27. “Most great artists define a new and unique region of hell.” - Scott Warren Miller

28. “In this world . . .It's Heaven when:The French are chefsThe British are policeThe Germans are engineersThe Swiss are bankersAnd the Italians are loversIt's Hell when:The English are chefsThe Germans are policeThe French are engineersThe Swiss are loversAnd the Italians are bankers.” - Hidekaz Himaruya

29. “.....listening means learning to hear someone's inner world and deepest feelings with far greater attention in order that we don't let our own assumptions get in the way. The dying may speak in images far more akin to dreamland than the world of everyday reality. In order to understand them we have to make adjustments to comprehend a poetic form of expression that is sometimes elusive but actually far more expressive than the world of facts.” - Robert L. Wise

30. “Even from far away, I could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music.” - Rick Riordan

31. “Once very near the end I said, 'If you can -- if it is allowed -- come to me when I too am on my death bed.' 'Allowed!' she said. 'Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I'd break it into bits.” - C.S. Lewis

32. “Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

33. “Can I tell you that in my eyes not even God would be good enough to command you?” - Kele Moon

34. “Tadas was sent to the principal today," announced Jonas at dinner. He wedged a huge piece of sausage into his small mouth."Why?" I asked."Because he talked about hell," sputtered Jonas, juice from the plump sausage dribbling down his chin."Jonas, don't speak with your mouth full. Take smaller pieces," scolded Mother."Sorry," said Jonas with his moth stuffed. "It's good." He finished chewing. I took a bite of sausage. It was warm and the skin was deliciously salty."Tadas told one of the girls that hell is the worst place ever and there's no escape for all eternity.""Now why would Tadas be talking of hell?" asked Papa, reaching for the vegetables."Because his father told him that if Stalin comes to Lithuania, we'll all end up there.” - Ruta Sepetys

35. “God Is, Lucifer is a devil, and there is a Hell.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

36. “Swear to God, for someone so obsessed with music, she’s borderline tone deaf. But trying to describe how I felt watching her dance around and sing would be like trying to build a skyscraper with my bare hands. It made me want to marry her. Made me want to buy her a magic airplane and fly her away to a place where nothing bad could ever happen. Made me want to pour rubber cement all over my chest and then lay down on top of her so that we’d be stuck together, and so it would hurt like hell if we ever tried to tear ourselves apart.” - Tiffanie DeBartolo

37. “You ask me, I'd guess heaven and hell look pretty much the same," I replied. "Only in hell, everything is just a little out of reach.” - Chris F. Holm

38. “People often speak of hell, not wanting to go there, avoiding it..etc. I never had that problem because hell is a state of mind. Look around you; rape, murder, wars, hatred, envy...my friend; you're already there!!” - Sandra Chami Kassis

39. “Hell's only the flip side of Paradise. Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the two.” - Sara Craven

40. “Through the night we drove in a tangle of waking and sleeping, nightmares from hell and holy white dreams.” - Glenda Millard

41. “Liz: What's it like in hell?Ketut: Same like heaven. Universe is a circle, Liss. To up, to down -- all same, at end.Liz: Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?Ketut: Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss.Liz: You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell -- same destinations -- are the same thing anyway?Ketut: Same-same. Same in end, so better be happy on journey.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

42. “Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person’s nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.” - Truman Capote

43. “Nothing says hell has to be fire.” - Robert Goolrick

44. “So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.” - Marcus J. Borg

45. “We are not built for mountains and dawns and artistic affinities; they are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff of life, and this is where we have to prove our mettle. A false Christianity takes us up on the mount and we want to stay there. But what about the devil-possessed world? Oh, let it go to hell! We are having a great time up here.” - Oswald Chambers

46. “Mr. Jamrach led me through the lobby and into the menagerie. The first was a parrot room, a fearsome screaming place of mad round eyes, crimson breasts that beat against bars, wings that flapped against their neighbours, blood red, royal blue, gypsy yellow, grass green. The birds were crammed along perches. Macaws hung upside down here and there, batting their white eyes, and small green parrots flittered above our heads in drifts. A hot of cockatoos looked down from on high over the shrill madness, high crested, creamy breasted. The screeching was like laughter in hell.” - Carol Birch

47. “When someone loves you so much that He dies for you, you can trust that any rewards He promises are going to be good.” - David Servant