Beatific Quotes

“River smiled sweetly at his tormentors and told them, "If you want to kick my ass, go ahead. Just explain to me why you're doing it."
After a confused pause, one of the skinheads said, "Ah, you wouldn't be worth it."
"We're all worth it, man," River said with a beatific smile. "We're all worth millions of planets and stars and galaxies and universes.”

— Gavin Edwards

“Oh! Dione of Opalescent Skin Ethereal. Your oospheric containment disperses argentous streams of velvety rays that cradle recesses of soul in gossamer of beatific visions.La Luna! Your enigmatic smile. Your watery countenance stirs the imagination and bestows inspiration on those receptive to Your Sacred Gifts.”

— Lady Svetlana

“Now here he was: sartorially, facially and interpersonally sharpened; every inch the beatific boffin.”

— Sam Byers

“Of course there is such a thing as too much doubt, for we ought to accept what is true. But there is also such a thing as proper doubt, for we ought not accept what is false. The possibility of doubt is inherent in the longing to understand, and nothing less than complete and perfect knowledge can satisfy the mind. We do not possess such knowledge here on earth; it is reserved for the beatific vision. Until then, doubt will be with us. This is ... why it is so unreasonable to trust only what cannot be doubted, as Descartes proposed, because everything can be doubted. We should believe, not what we cannot doubt, but what we have the best reasons to believe.”

— J. Budziszewski

“Eloise," Penelope said, somewhat breathless from trying to shake off
Hyacinth.
"Penelope." But Eloise's voice sounded curious. Which did not
surprise Penelope; Eloise was no fool, and she was well aware that her
brother's normal modes of behavior did not include beatific smiles in her
direction.
"Eloise," Hyacinth said, for no reason Penelope could deduce.
"Hyacinth."
Penelope turned to her husband. "Colin."
He looked amused. "Penelope. Hyacinth."
Hyacinth grinned. "Colin." And then: "Sir Phillip."
"Ladies." Sir Phillip, it seemed, favored brevity.
"Stop!" Eloise burst out. "What is going on?"
"A recitation of our Christian names, apparently," Hyacinth said.”

— Julia Quinn

“This was the joy that the world sought
sacred and pagan all at once. A union between two dissimilars into a seamless one. A picture of love and deep satisfaction. An ecstatic glimpse of the beatific vision.”

— Sylvain Reynard

“Then a complete silence fell over everybody; where once Dean would have talked his way out, he now fell silent himself, but standing in front of everybody, ragged and broken and idiotic, right under the lightbulbs, his bony mad face covered with sweat and throbbing veins, saying, "Yes, yes, yes," as though tremendous revelations were pouring into him all the time now, and I am convinced they were, and the others suspected as much and were frightened. He was BEAT-the root, the soul of Beatific.”

— Jack Kerouac

“I'd rather be a superhero in hell, kicking all kinds of demon ass, than an angel in heaven, wafting around with a beatific smile on my face, playing a pansy harp all day. Dude, give me drums and bang cymbals! I like the crash and bang.”

— Karen Marie Moning

“I also figure being eternally happy would be eternally boring so I try not to be too interesting, even though it's hard for me. I'd rather be a superhero in hell, kicking all kinds of demon ass, than an angel in heaven, wafting around with a beatific smile on my face, playing a pansy harp all day. Dude, give me drums and big cymbals! I like the crash and bang.”

— Karen Marie Moning

“But I guess you would look beatific, too, if the man you had been in love with since the fifth grade had told you that he was in love with you, too.”

— Meg Cabot

“But it would be like going to Heaven and not finding any of your friends there. Her life would go all beatific and empty in the eyes.”

— Lorrie Moore

“When I stepped outside, the Wiccans stopped, turning as one body and bestowing beatific smiles on me ...
"Sister Winterbourne" the first one said. She threw open her arms, embrace me, planted a kiss on my lips, then another on my left breast. I yelped ...
I grabbed the nearest discarded robe. "Could you please put this
Could you all put these
Could you get dressed, please?" The woman only bestowed a serene smile on me. "We are as the Goddess requires." "The Goddess requires you to be naked on my lawn?" "We aren't naked child, we're skyclad." ...
"That's
uh
very
I mean
" I stammered. Be polite, I reminded myself. Witches should respect Wiccans, even if we didn't quite get the whole Goddesss-Worship thing. I knew some Wiccans, and they were very nice people, though I must admit they'd never arrived in my backyard naked and kissed my tits before.”

— Kelley Armstrong

“I couldn't make any judgment on the Summa, except to say this: I read it for about twenty minutes every night before I go to bed. If my mother were to come in during this process and say, 'Turn off that light. It's late,' I with a lifted finger and broad bland beatific expression, would reply, 'On the contrary, I answer that the light, being eternal and limitless, cannot be turned off. Shut your eyes,' or some such thing.”

— Flannery O'Connor

“I am not so foolish as to equate what happens under the influence of mescalin or of any other drug, prepared or in the future preparable, with the realization of the end and ultimate purpose of human life: Enlightenment, the Beatific Vision. All I am suggesting is that the mescalin experience is what Catholic theologians call "a gratuitous grace," not necessary to salvation but potentially helpful and to be accepted thankfully, if made available. To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large-this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.”

— Aldous Huxley

“Our tragedy is their beauty. Our pain is their art. The beatific bereavement that is our life captured on a canvas for all the world to see.”

— Solange Nicole

“Father Mike was popular with the church widows. They liked to crowd around him, offering him cookies and bathing in his beatific essence. Part of this essence came from Father Mike's perfect contentment at being five foot four. His shortness had a charitable aspect to it, as though he had given away his height.”

— Jeffrey Eugenides

“Mark, looking beatific, took the dispenser of maple syrup off the table and upended it over his strawberries. He picked one up and put it in his mouth, stem and all. Julian stared at him.
"What?" Mark said. "This is a perfectly normal thing to eat."
"Sure it is," said Julian. "If you're a hummingbird.”

— Cassandra Clare

“In her early days she had that beatific expression characteristic of Victorian prettiness - like a sheep painted by Raphael.”

— James Agate

“He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth.”

— John Milton

“Anderson!" he snapped murderously, "if you can tear your attention from Miss Danner's bust, the rest of us will be able to finish this meeting." Lauren flushed a vivid pink, but the elderly Anderson turned a purple hue that might be indicative of an impending stroke.
As soon as the last staff member had filed out of the conference room, Lauren ignored Mary's warning look and turned furiously on Nick. "I hope you're satisfied!" she hissed furiously. "You not only humiliated me, you nearly gave that poor old man a heart attack.What do you plan to do for an encore?"
"Fire the first woman who opens her mouth," Nick retorted coldly. He walked around her and strode out of the conference room.
Outraged past all reason, Lauren started after him, but Mary stopped her. "Don't argue with him," she said, gazing after Nick with a beatific smile on her face. She looked as if she had just witnessed a miracle. "In his present mood he'd fire you, and he'd regret that for the rest of his life.”

— Judith McNaught

“I understand that, each time we contemplate with desire and devotion the Host in which is hidden Christ's Eucharistic Body, we increase our merits in heaven and secure special joys to be ours later in the beatific vision of God”

— Gertrude The Great

“Truth is not over there, wherever over there is. Truth is neither housed in religious rituals nor secret doctrines, nor in a guru's touch or beatific smile, nor in exotic locations or ancient temples. Truth is quite literally the only thing that does exist. It is not hidden but in plain view, not lacking but abundantly present.”

— Adyashanti

“I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with "Beat" ... the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific ... People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks and finally I was called the "avatar" of all this.”

— Jack Kerouac

“Whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.”

— Elizabeth Bowen

“Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic.”

— Evelyn Waugh

“From the colour the nature And by the nature the sign! Beatific spirits welding together As in one ash-tree in Ygdrasail.”

— Ezra Pound

“After the fever of life
after wearinesses, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding
after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death
at length the white throne of God
at length the beatific vision.”

— John Henry Newman

“Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell >From heaven; for ev'n in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoy'd In vision beatific.”

— John Milton

“Oh let us continually keep faith in exercise, till it be entirely swallowed up in the boundless ocean of beatific vision.”

— George Whitefield

“But the knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we were the object from the first moment of His Incarnation, exceed all that the human intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was He conceived in the womb of the Mother of God, when He began to enjoy the Beatific Vision, and in that vision all the members of His Mystical Body were continually and unceasingly present to Him, and He embraced them with His redeeming love”

— Pope Pius XII

“Above all, the state of grace is absolutely necessary at the moment of death; without it, salvation and supernatural happiness the beatific vision of God - are impossible.”

— Pope Pius XII