Purgatory Quotes - Page 3

• So many people of color who made major contributions to American history have been trapped in the purgatory of history.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Color, People, American History

  "Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. March 19, 2008.

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• The concept of 'purgatory' is in Catholic Church dogma, and most black people are not Catholic - mostly their Christian realities focus on heaven or hell. Purgatory is for the expiation of sin, the fact that you are there, and not in hell, means you'll eventually work your way to heaven. The experience of this play, 'Small oak tree', and its psychological architecture, relies on its knowledge of that. Many black people believe that this life, within itself, is a way to work out whatever obligations we have, in order to get to a better place.

  Harry Lennix

  Christian, Believe, Mean

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• By marrying to soon, many individuals sacrifice their chance to struggle through this purgatory of solitude and search toward a greater sense of self-confidence. They glance at the world outside the family and with hardly a second thought grasp anxiously for a partner. In marriage they seek a substitute for the security of the family of origin and an escape from aloneness. What they do not realize is that moving so quickly from one family to another, they make it easy to transfer to the new marriage all their difficult experiences in the family of origin.

  Augustus

  Moving, Struggle, Sacrifice

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• He shrugged. "I was...thinking." "About what?" "The fires of purgatory." She had to sit down. He wasn't making any sense now. "What does that mean?" she asked. "Patrick told me he would walk through the fires of purgatory if he had to in order to please his wife." She went over to the bed and sat down on the side. "And?" she prodded when he didn't continue. He stripped out of his clothing and walked over to her. He pulled her to her feet and stared down to her. "And I have only just realized I would do the same for you.

  Julie Garwood

  Mean, Thinking, Fire

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• A prison! heav'ns, I loath the hated name,
  Famine's metropolis, the sink of shame,
  A nauseous sepulchre, whose craving womb
  Hourly inters poor mortals in its tomb;
  By ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possess'd,
  Ev'n purgatory itself to thee 's a jest.

  Tom Brown, Jr.

  Names, Prison, Shame

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• Supernatural hasn't spent a lot of time on relationship stories, and this is a really nice mechanism to do that without imposing that on the forward momentum of these other stories that we're telling. In the writers' room we tend to say, "We're never going to be able to give a hell or Purgatory as good as people's imaginations," so the instinct is normally not to go there. But, we went the other way this year and said, "We are going to go there," because there's a really, really strong character thing going on down there.

  Jeremy Carver

  Strong, Nice, Character

  Source: collider.com

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• Any wife will save you from purgatory, and a diligent one will secure heaven to you.

  Elizabeth Montagu

  Wife, Heaven, Diligent

  Elizabeth Montagu (2015). “The Letters of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu”, p.116, Cambridge University Press

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• From the time of Dante [Alighieri], when you have the Ptolemaic universe, you had God on the outside like a hypersphere, and then in the center you have the Earth, all the seven heavens and layers, and then you have the Mount of Purgatory and Hell right in the center, and here's Satan flapping his wings and he keeps making the lake of Cocytus ice so you can't get out. So, again, where Heaven and Hell are, who the hell knows that now?

  Paul Laffoley

  Ice, Wings, Lakes

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

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• I want to serve. I love my country. I love service above self and I don't want my talents to go to waste. I also want to send a message to other men and women who've tripped over themselves, or over life: that you need to serve your time in purgatory.

  Paula Broadwell

  Country, Men, Self

  Source: www.vanityfair.com

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• Me writing the book and the subsequent interactions that we had were actually the cap on that experience. We were still in this weird purgatory about it when I published the book. When I gave them the galleys and what ensued after that, then I understood a lot more about our relationships and what the experience meant to them. I'd never wanted to know what they thought about it at all.

  Melissa Febos

  Book, Writing, Our Relationship

  Source: therumpus.net

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• What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory; and found it more convenient to indulge his depraved appetites, and pay an exorbitant price for absolution, than listen to the suggestions of reason, and work out his own salvation: in a word, was not the separation of religion from morality the work of the priests...?

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Dark, Men, Work Out

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1997). “The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman”, p.72, Broadview Press

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• The way I understood purgatory - and maybe you've got a different version - but in Chicago in the '70s, the idea was it was like detention. You had screwed up and you go over there in purgatory and you sit there until the end of days and then we'll decide. You'd made your mistake, and you were in prison, and it's not terrible and it's not great, and you feel a little crappy because you were not in the presence of God.

  George Saunders

  Mistake, Ideas, The End Of The Day

  Interview With Jenny Shank, www.patheos.com. March 6, 2017.

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• I see no reason why I should not live on indefinitely just as I have done, and on the whole I am more comfortable here than in Purgatory, a place that I imagine to be like the suburbs of London.

  Mary Borden

  Life, Done, London

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• The futile and exhausting existence of a purgatory-like law enforcement system.

  Killer Mike

  Law, Enforcement, Existence

  "Run the Jewels’ New Video Beautifully Exposes the ‘Futility’ of Police Brutality" by Dee Lockett, www.vulture.com. March 26, 2015.

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• In this life there is no purgatory; it is either hell or paradise; for to him who serves God truly, every trouble and infirmity turns into consolations, and through all kinds of trouble he has a paradise within himself even in this world: and he who does not serve God truly, and gives himself up to sensuality, has one hell in this world, and another in the next.

  Philip Neri

  Giving, Doe, World

  Saint Philip Neri, Faber, Frederick William Faber (1995). “If God be with Us: The Maxims of St. Philip Neri”, p.47, Gracewing Publishing

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• The realms of the gods and demons - heaven, purgatory, hell - are of the substance of dreams. Myth, in this view, is the dream of the world.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, Views, Heaven

  Joseph Campbell, David Kudler (2003). “Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal”, p.70, New World Library

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• One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory.

  Pico Iyer

  Eden, Curiosity, Foreigners

  Pico Iyer (2011). “The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home”, p.185, Vintage

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• We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper.

  Jules Renard

  Laughter, Laughing, Heaven

  Jules Renard (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.257, Tin House Books

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• I had the feeling that Sarajevo was the perfect place to shoot the film I wanted to shoot. It is the perfect illustration of purgatory.

  Jean-Luc Godard

  Illustration, Perfect, Feelings

  "'Cinema Is Over'". Interview with Geoffrey Macnab, www.theguardian.com. April 29, 2005.

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• What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside of me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life--me, so calm and peaceful?

  Fernando Pessoa

  Heaven, Peaceful, Calm

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.22, Penguin UK

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• I thought about telling him the truth: 'Oh, nothing. Just having my soul exorcised so I can roam around purgatory, looking for the ghost of the dead cowboy who used to live in my bedroom.

  Meg Cabot

  Cowboy, Soul, Ghost

  Meg Cabot (2009). “Young Blood”, p.166, Pan Macmillan

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• They were tower stairs, a tight corkscrew down. The spiraling descent made Karou dizzy: down, around, down, around, hypnotic, until it seemed as if she were caught in a purgatory of stairs and would go down like this forever.

  Laini Taylor

  Forever, Towers, Dizzy

  Laini Taylor (2011). “Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.76, Hachette UK

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• Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.

  Graham Greene

  Pain, Night, Light

  Graham Greene (1971). “The Power and the Glory”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• We in Purgatory sing fondly of Hell.

  Denis Johnson

  Hell

  Denis Johnson (2016). “Tree of Smoke”, p.191, Pan Macmillan

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• Tis a petty kind of fame At best, that comes of making violins; And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go To purgatory none the less.

  George Eliot

  Violin, Kind, Fame

  George Eliot (1885). “Poems: Together with Brother Jacob and The Lifted Veil”

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