Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Hell
Curiosis fabricavit inferos.
He fashioned hell for the inquisitive.
St. Augustine—Confessions. Bk. XI. Ch. XII. Quoting an unnamed author. Adapted from “Alta, scrutantibus gehennas parabat.” God prepared hell, for those who are inquisitive about high things.
Hell is more bearable than nothingness.
Bailey—Festus. Sc. Heaven.
Hell is the wrath of God—His hate of sin.
Bailey—Festus. Sc. Hell. L. 194.
Hell is paved with good intentions.
Quoted as Baxter’s saying by Coleridge. Notes Theol., Polit. and Miscel. P. 259. Ed. 1853.
Hell is paved with infants’ skulls.
Baxter. In Hazlitt—Table Talk. He was stoned by the women of Kidderminster for quoting this in the pulpit.
L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs.
Hell is full of good wishes or desires.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Archbishop Trench calls it “queen of all proverbs.”
The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell dwells within myself.
Sir Thomas Browne—Religio Medici. Pt. I. Sec. LI.
But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And there hath been thy bane.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto III. St. 42.
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!
Byron—The Giaour. L. 748.
Quien ha infierene nula es retencio.
In hell there is no retention.
Cervantes—Don Quixote. I. 25. Sancho Panza, misquoting the saying.
Hell is paved with priests’ skulls.
St. Chrysostom.
Undique ad inferos tantundem viæ est.
From all sides there is equally a way to the lower world.
Cicero—Tusc. Quæst. Bk. I. 43. 104. Quoted as a saying of Anaxagoras.
There is in hell a place stone-built throughout,
Called Malebolge, of an iron hue,
Like to the wall that circles it about.
Dante—Inferno. Canto XVIII. L. 1.
We spirits have just such natures
We had for all the world, when human creatures;
And, therefore, I, that was an actress here,
Play all my tricks in hell, a goblin there.
Dryden—Tyrannick Love. Epilogue.
The way of sinners is made plain with stones, but at the end thereof is the pit of hell.
Ecclesiasticus. XXI. 10.
Hell is paved with the skulls of great scholars, and paled in with the bones of great men.
Giles Firmin—The Real Christian. (1670). Quoted as a proverb.
Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding sheet of Edward’s race;
Give ample room and verge enough
The characters of Hell to trace.
Gray—Bard. Canto II.
El infierno es lleno de buenas intenciones.
Hell is full of good intentions.
Adapted probably from a saying of Antonio Guevara, quoted by the Portuguese as “Hell is paved with good intentions, and roofed with lost opportunities.”
Hell is full of good meanings and wishings.
Herbert—Jacula Prudentum. No. 176.
Hell is no other but a soundlesse pit,
Where no one beame of comfort peeps in it.
Herrick—Noble Numbers. Hell.
Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming.
Isaiah. XIV. 9.
And, bid him go to hell, to hell he goes.
Samuel Johnson—London. L. 116.
Hell is paved with good intentions.
Samuel Johnson—(Quoted) Boswell’s Life of Johnson. (1775).
Et metus ille foras præceps Acheruntis agundus,
Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo,
Omnia suffuscans mortis nigrore, neque ullam
Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque relinquit.
The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure.
Lucretius—De Rerum Natura. III. 37.
Look where he goes! but see he comes again
Because I stay! Techelles, let us march
And weary death with bearing souls to hell.
Marlowe—Tamburlane the Great. Act V. Sc. III. L. 75.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv’d only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. I. L. 61.
Hail, horrors, hail,
Infernal world! and thou profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. I. L. 251.
Long is the way
And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. II. L. 432.
Hell
Grew darker at their frown.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. II. L. 719.
On a sudden open fly
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
Th’ infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. II. L. 879.
Nor from hell
One step no more than from himself can fly
By change of place.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. IV. L. 21.
Myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep,
Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide;
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. IV. L. 75.
All hell broke loose.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. IV. L. 918.
The gates that now
Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame
Far into Chaos, since the fiend pass’d through.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. X. L. 232.
In inferno nulla est redemptio.
There is no redemption from hell.
Pope Paul III, when Michael Angelo refused to alter a portrait introduced among the condemned in his “Last Judgment.”
To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions hell to ears polite.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. IV. L. 149.
He knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.
Proverbs. IX. 18.
Do not be troubled by St. Bernard’s saying that “Hell is full of good intentions and wills.”
Francis de Sales—Letter to Madame de Chantal. (1605). Letter XII. P. 70. Selections from the Spiritual Letters of S. Francis de Sales. Trans. by the author of “A Dominican Artist.” Letter LXXIV in Blaise ed. Quoted also in Letter XXII, Bk. II. of Leonard’s ed. (1726). Collet’s La Vraie et Solide Piété. Pt. I. Ch. LXXV.
Black is the badge of hell,
The hue of dungeons and the suit of night.
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 254.
I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire.
Merry Wives of Windsor. Act V. Sc. 5. L. 38.
Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.
Tempest. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 214.
It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions; they have their place in heaven also.
Southey—Colloquies on Society.
St. Austin might have returned another answer to him that asked him, “What God employed himself about before the world was made?” “He was making hell.”
Southey—Commonplace Book, Fourth Series. P. 591.
Self-love and the love of the world constitute hell.
Swedenborg—Apocalypse Explained. Par. 1,144.
Nay, then, what flames are these that leap and swell
As ’twere to show, where earth’s foundations crack,
The secrets of the sepulchres of hell
On Dante’s track?
Swinburne—In Guernsey. Pt. IV. St. 3.
Facilis descensus Averno est;
Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.
Easy is the descent to Lake Avernus (mouth of Hades); night and day the gate of gloomy Dis (god of Hades) is open; but to retrace one’s steps, and escape to the upper air, this indeed is a task; this indeed is a toil.
Vergil—Æneid. VI. 26. (“Averni” in some editions.)
In the throat
Of Hell, before the very vestibule
Of opening Orcus, sit Remorse and Grief,
And pale Disease, and sad Old Age and Fear,
And Hunger that persuades to crime, and Want:
Forms terrible to see. Suffering and Death
Inhabit here, and Death’s own brother Sleep;
And the mind’s evil lusts and deadly War,
Lie at the threshold, and the iron beds
Of the Eumenides; and Discord wild
Her viper-locks with bloody fillets bound.
Vergil—Æneid. Bk. VI. L. 336. C. P. Cranch’s trans.
In the deepest pits of ’Ell,
Where the worst defaulters dwell
(Charcoal devils used as fuel as you require ’em),
There’s some lovely coloured rays,
Pyrotechnical displays,
But you can’t expect the burning to admire ’em!
Edgar Wallace—Nature Fails. L’Envoi.
Die Helle ist mit Mönchskappen, Pfaffenfalten, und Pickelhauben gepflastert.
Hell is paved with monks’ cowls, priests’ drapery, and spike-helmets.
Wander traces the saying to 1605.
That’s the greatest torture souls feel in hell,
In hell, that they must live, and cannot die.
John Webster—Duchess of Malfi. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 84.