70 Quotes About The Afterlife

Exploring the mysteries of the afterlife has fascinated humanity for centuries, prompting a myriad of contemplative thoughts and reflections from philosophers, writers, and spiritual leaders. Whether envisioned as a realm of comfort, a continuation of the soul's journey, or an enigmatic unknown, the afterlife persists as a source of awe and intrigue. In this carefully curated collection, we delve into 70 poignant quotes that capture the diverse perspectives and emotions tied to this everlasting enigma. These quotes offer solace, spark curiosity, and invite reflection, providing a glimpse into humanity's eternal quest to understand what lies beyond our earthly existence.

1. “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

2. “Fools that will laugh on earth, most weep in hell.” - Christopher Marlowe

3. “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.” - Erma Bombeck

4. “I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.” - Albert Camus

5. “To die, - To sleep, - To sleep!Perchance to dream: - ay, there's the rub;For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life;” - William Shakespeare

6. “I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.” - Carl Sagan

7. “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” - Dante Alighieri

8. “I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.” - Bertrand Russell

9. “The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one's education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died.” - Plato

10. “Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.” - Kurt Vonnegut

11. “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” - Walt Whitman

12. “The heavens will not be filled with those who never made mistakes but with those who recognized that they were off course and who corrected their ways to get back in the light of gospel truth.” - Dieter F. Uchtdorf

13. “You are dead- what am I speaking to?” - Philip Pullman

14. “Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed to betray.” - Michael Ignatieff

15. “Time," the Captain said, "is not what you think." He sat down next to Eddie. "Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.” - Mitch Albom

16. “There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.” - colum mccann

17. “Suddenly I began to find a strange meaning in old fairy-tales; woods, rivers, mountains, became living beings; mysterious life filled the night; with new interests and new expectations I began to dream again of distant travels; and I remembered many extraordinary things that I had heard about old monasteries. Ideas and feelings which had long since ceased to interest me suddenly began to assume significance and interest. A deep meaning and many subtle allegories appeared in what only yesterday had seemed to be naive popular fantasy or crude superstition. And the greatest mystery and the greatest miracle was that the thought became possible that death may not exist, that those who have gone may not have vanished altogether, but exist somewhere and somehow, and that perhaps I may see them again. I have become so accustomed to think "scientifically" that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him; and suddenly he hears that his companions are alive, that they have escaped and that there is hope also for him. And he fears to believe this, because it would be so terrible if it proved to be false, and nothing would remain but prison and the expectation of execution.” - P.D. Ouspensky

18. “There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it?” - Robert A. Heinlein

19. “But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.” - C.S. Lewis

20. “Afterlife exist in the unidentified substances.” - Toba Beta

21. “There wasn't a lot of bullshit in my heaven.” - Alice Sebold

22. “Here's my question: What age are you when you're in Heaven?” - Jodi Picoult

23. “Hell is the impossibility of reason.” - Oliver Stone

24. “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

25. “She's had a long life. Now she's going to the Lord." "Frankly it creeps me out a little when you say things like that," Simon said. "It shouldn't. If you don't like 'Lord,' pick another word. She's going home. She's going back to the party. Whatever you like." "I suppose you have some definite ideas about an afterlife." "Sure. We get reabsorbed into the earthly and celestial mechanism." "No heaven?" "That's heaven." "What about realms of glory? What about walking around in golden slippers?" "We abandon consciousness as if we were waking from a bad dream. We throw it off like clothes that never fit us right. It's an ecstatic release we're physically unable to apprehend while we're in our bodies. Orgasm is our best hint, but it's crude and minor by comparison.” - Michael Cunningham

26. “I went to him in the doorway and embraced him tightly. "Thank you," I whispered. "You've done so much for us, and we've done nothing for you.""Don't say that." Vic's hands patted my back. "You're my friends. Nothing else to it.” - Claudia Gray

27. “That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays” - Mitch Albom

28. “Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.” - Tom Stoppard

29. “I make a joke of it, but... but I'm afraid of death." He straightened up and turned to look into Joseph's eyes. Joseph saw the fear there and was shocked by the intensity of it. "Are you afraid to die, Joseph?" Joseph considered for a moment, then shook his head. "I'm not afraid to now, but then I'm not dying now. When I come to that moment, I will probably be... what's the right word? Maybe frightened in a way that you're frightened when an experience lies before you you've never had. "No more than that?" "I hope not.” - Gilbert Morris

30. “When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.” - Ann Druyan

31. “Of all the miracles Po had seen in the time and space of its death, Po thought this--the absorption of another, the carrying of it--was the most bewildering and remarkable of all. Whenever Bundle separated again, Po was left with an ache of sadness that reminded the ghost of the body it had left behind.” - Lauren Oliver

32. “The dead are merely the countrymen of my future.” - Dean Koontz

33. “I leave the kitchen table to bathe, and to dress for church. If only my closet held on its shelves an array of faces I could wear rather than dresses, I would know which face to put on today. As for the dresses, I haven't a clue.” - Tim Cummings

34. “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

35. “Listen, we’ll come visit you. Okay? I’ll dress up as William Shakespeare, Lucent as Emily Dickinson, and beautiful ‘Ray’ as someone dashing and manly like Jules Verne or Ernest Hemingway...and we’ll write on your white-room walls. We’ll write you out of your supposed insanity. I love you, Micky Affias.-James (from "Descendants of the Eminent")” - Tim Cummings

36. “It must not be thought, however, that in pagan Ireland Fairyland was altogether conceived as a Hades or place of the dead. We have already seen that in some of its types and aspects it was inherently nothing of the sort; as when, for example, it came to be confused with the Land of the Gods. In all likelihood these separate paradises and deadlands of a nature so various were the result of the stratified beliefs of successive races dwelling in the same region. A conquering race would scarcely credit that its heroes would, after death, betake themselves to the deadland of the beaten and enslaved aborigines. The gods of vanquished races might be conceived as presiding over spheres of the dead for which their victors would have nothing but contempt, and which, because of that very contempt, might come to be conceived as hells or places of a debased and grovelling kind, pestiferous regions which only the spirits of despised "natives" or the undesirable might inhabit.” - Lewis Spence

37. “Life ends with a snap of small bones, a head cracked from its stem, and a spirit unmoored...” - Sarah Kernochan

38. “No quality imparts apparent strength to its possessors more effectively than faith. From hospital beds to battlefields, it is the iron that strengthens a man to confront his destiny.” - Mike Corbett

39. “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

40. “Cynicism is extremely contagious, and the most pious among us cannot long endure its potency. The gullible should be on their guard, however, since this endearing quality frequently masquerades as wit.” - Mike Corbett

41. “Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.” - Tom Stoppard

42. “I have kept thee long in waiting, dear Romuald, and thou mayst well have thought that I had forgotten thee. But I have come from a long distance and from a place from which no one has ever before returned; there is neither moon nor sun in the country from which I come; there is naught but space and shadow; neither road nor path; no ground for the foot, no air for the wing; and yet here I am, for love is stronger than death, and it will end by vanquishing it. Ah! what gloomy faces and what terrible things I have seen in my journeying! What a world of trouble my soul, returned to this earth by the power of my will, has had in finding its body and reinstating itself therein! What mighty efforts I had to put forth before I could raise the stone with which they had covered me! See! the palms of my poor hands are all blistered from it. Kiss them to make them well, dear love!” - Théophile Gautier

43. “Eternity was a restless bitch.” - Michael L. Martin Jr.

44. “To Hell we have already been.” - Michael L. Martin Jr.

45. “Some would do just about anything for an exodus.” - Michael L. Martin Jr.

46. “No more is your master a god, Nobility, but he wants offerings from all. When Black God claims us, who will be punished for giving worship and power to a false god? The prince? Or Banjiku?” - Tamora Pierce

47. “Endings are not always bad. Most times they're just beginnings in disguise.” - Kim Harrison

48. “Human knowledge hasn't been complete enough to understand the afterlife if it hasn't been through the valley of death.” - Toba Beta

49. “At first it's pretty cool: the limitless fruit of knowledge hanging low in your path. Then you realize it's the only thing to eat around here.” - Rajiv Joseph

50. “Sydney did not believe in life after death, but in her experience, admitting this could lead to long and complicated discussions in which people seemed to think that since she did not believe in God or the afterlife, there was nothing to stop her from becoming an ax murderer.” - Maureen F. McHugh

51. “Actually, the substitution of the reality-principle for the pleasure-principle denotes no dethronement of the pleasure-principle, but only a safeguarding of it. A momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results, is given up, but only in order to gain in the new way an assured pleasure coming later. But the end psychic impression made by this substitution has been so powerful that it is mirrored in a special religious myth. The doctrine of reward in a future life for the—voluntary or enforced—renunciation of earthly lusts is nothing but a mythical projection of this revolution in the mind. In logical pursuit of this prototype, religions have been able to effect the absolute renunciation of pleasure in this life by means of the promise of compensation in a future life; they have not, however, achieved a conquest of the pleasure-principle this way. It is science which comes nearest to succeeding in this conquest; science, however, also offers intellectual pleasure during its work and promises practical gain at the end.” - Sigmund Freud

52. “In life one of Midnight’s favourite movies had been It’s a Wonderful Life, a touching story where a man called George Bailey is shown how poor the world would have been if he’d never existed, but now the young ghost of Midnight Merlot was sat imagining himself not as the kind hero of his own narrative, but, - but as the anti-George.” - Tom Conrad

53. “It's an insidious idea, this notion that there is life after death. The promise of a reward in the afterlife has been used as an excuse to deny help to the poor, helpless and oppressed; to explain away human misery rather than deal with it. It is an idea that is used to encourage young men and women to kill themselves, and others, so that they can become martyrs. It allows victims of injustice to be told not to worry because justice will be done in the afterlife. It depresses me to think that so many people on the planet live their lives with this notion. Can we truly fulfill our potential as a species as long as we hold on to, and encourage, the perpetuation of the lie of life after death?” - Alom Shaha

54. “We had enough quite enough snobbery in this world without exporting it to the hereafter.” - Rick Riordan

55. “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

56. “The Angel of Death took the woman's frail hand. "Don't be afraid." she said. "Life is your past. Death, on the other hand, is your soul preparing for a new beginning. A brand new adventure, if you like." An excerpt from Paradox - Equilibrium. Book 4 in the Paradox series (release date 2013)” - Patti Roberts

57. “And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

58. “The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought, particularly for those who bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it's being held. On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily laying down.” - Woody Allen

59. “Reincarnation?”He shrugged. “I’ve never seen any evidence that it’s real. But I’ve never seen anything that disproves it either. I believe the afterlife is better than what we have here—and it would take something extraordinary to make someone willing to come back.” - Patricia Briggs

60. “While many ethnic and religious groups are mainly focused on the afterlife and downplaying this world, Jews view wealth and success as a blessing and gift from God.” - H.W. Charles

61. “If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.” - Christopher Hitchens

62. “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

63. “I believe humans have souls, and I believe in the conservation of souls.” - John Green

64. “I don't know what happens after we die. It doesn't seem to me like there can be much past this. But I suppose I can conceive that what we make and do can last beyond us. Maybe in a different place, on another plane.” - Ally Condie

65. “You hear stories like that all your life and think: cool, a ghost bus. But now we have to look at this stuff analytically... a ghost bus?! The “ghost” of a motor vehicle? A public conveyance, presumably, which didn't head towards the light, move on to join the choir invisible in... bus heaven, the great terminus in the sky, where all good buses go when they... I don't know, break down, but instead is doomed to … drive eternally the streets of Earth! How can there be a ghost bus?!” - Paul Cornell

66. “Throughout Mesoamerica it was a common belief that a dog carried the soul of a newly deceased person across a body of water. According to the Aztecs, the first level of the Underworld was a place called Apanoayan (where one crosses the river) or Itzcuintlan (the Place of Dogs).” - Elizabeth Eiler

67. “I don't feel so sad when somebody dies, Julio, because they fly away to explore the stars and planets. When it's our turn we join them in exploring the universe.” - Gilbert Hernández

68. “When we were alive, they told us that when we died we'd go to heaven. And they said that heaven was a place of joy and glory and we would spend eternity in the company of saints and angels praising the Almighty, in a state of bliss. That's what they said. And that's what led some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer, while all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never knew. Because the land of the dead isn't a place of reward or a place of punishment, it is a place of nothing. The good come here as well as the wicked, and all of us languish in this gloom forever, with no hope of freedom, or joy, or sleep, or rest, or peace. But now this child has come offering us a way out and I'm going to follow her. Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won't be nothing. We'll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we'll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we'll be glistening in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.” - Philip Pullman

69. “I suppose that now would be the time to ask for forgiveness for all the things I've done, but I'm sure my list would never be complete. I also don't believe that whatever comes after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions...I don't believe that what comes after depends on anything I do at all.” - Veronica Roth

70. “There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.” - Iris Murdoch