"Celestial City" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the effect upon my own soul; but these grand temple-gates are always open, and from their entrance we seem to catch glimpses of the celestial city beyond, inspiring only good and noble thoughts, with an anxious, earnest endeavor to reach ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... the by, who, if they had been made before the hills, would never have been much wiser. All through these solemn passages and gorges, they are discussing hotels, champagne, wine, and cigars. I presume they would do the same thing at the gates of the Celestial City, if they should accidentally find themselves there. It is one of the dark providences that multitudes of this calibre of mind find leisure and means to come among these scenes, while many to whom they would ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... heaven to earth; in the Persian legend, where the rainbow arch Chinevad is flung across the gloomy depths between this world and the home of the happy; and even in the current Christian allegory which represents the waters of the mythical Jordan rolling between us and the Celestial City. ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... eyesight is almost gone, but the splendors of the celestial city kindle up her vision. The gray light of heaven's morn has struck through the gray locks which are folded back over the wrinkled temples. She stoops very much now under the burden of care she used to carry for her children. She sits at home, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... CITIE, the Celestial City, Heaven. The description is suggested by that in Revelation, xxi, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... in the narrative is indicated—'So I awoke from my dream;' it is resumed with the words—'And I slept and dreamed again, and saw the same two pilgrims going down the mountains along the highway towards the city.' Already from the top of an high hill called 'Clear,' the Celestial City was in view; dangers there were still to be encountered; but to have reached that high hill and to have seen something like a gate, and some of the glory of the place, was an attainment and an incentive." There ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... knew not where to look, nor which forms to choose, in the dazzling confusion. Silent and all unmoved by the wind they stood, sharp and brittle as of virgin ore—not trees of earth, but the glorified forests of All-Father Odin's paradise, the celestial city of Asgaard. No living forms of vegetation are so lovely. Tropical palms, the tree-ferns of Penang, the lotus of Indian rivers, the feathery bamboo, the arrowy areca—what are they beside these marvellous growths of winter, these shining sprays of pearl, ivory and opal, gleaming in the ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... years by Altruists; but, while the doctrine is accepted both by Agnostics and Christians as perfect, there has been little done to show men how to practically realize it. But I have ever noted that in this Pilgrim's Progress of our life, those are most likely to attain to the Celestial City, and all its golden glories, who, like CHRISTIAN, start from the lowliest beginnings; and as the learning our letters leads to reading the greatest books, so the simplest method of directing the attention and the most mechanical ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... I was once a fair and flourishing professor, both in mine own eyes, and also in the eyes of others; I once was, as I thought, fair for the Celestial City, and had then even joy at the thoughts that I should get ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... really drawing nearer to the truth, absorbing its delicious radiance and sweetness. Those sunny mornings, spent in strolling and talking, in colonnade or garden, in that imperishable Athens, seemed to Hugh like the talk of saints in some celestial city. Saints not of heavy and pious rectitude, conventional in posture and dreary in mind, but souls to whom love and laughter, pathos and sorrow, were alike sweet. Instead of approaching life with a sense of its gravity, its heinousness, its complexity, timid of joy and emotion and delight, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which lesser men toil in vain; sometimes the Car of Progress stands still for a thousand years, else rolls slowly back toward brutishness, there being none of sufficient strength to advance the standards further up the rugged mountainside—nearer the Celestial City. Thus, ever in ebb and flow, gaining and losing, only to regain; nations rising and falling but to serve as stepping-stones whereon mount a nobler race, a grander people, the irrepressible conflict of the Godlike with the Beastlike in man goes ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... familiar hearth our own vital lamp burns low, and the golden bowl begins to shudder and the silver cord to untwine, let our last look be upon faces that we best love; let the gates that open into the celestial City be these well-known doors—and thus may ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Christian's struggle with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation, and followed his footsteps as they trod the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as they passed through the dangers of Vanity Fair, and brought him at last to the Celestial City, and the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... radiant, that you feel as if that boundless effulgence emanated from themselves,—were flowing forth from some hidden fountain of light within. It is like no other scene of earthly glory you ever saw. You can compare it only to some celestial city which has been let down from the firmament upon the tops of the mountains, with its glittering turrets, its domes of sapphire, and its wall of alabaster, needing no sun or other source of earthly light ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... they lay here,' says sweet John Bunyan, in his 'Pilgrim's Progress,' 'and waited for the good hour, there was a noise in the town that there was a post come from the celestial city, with matter of great importance to one Christiana. So enquiry was made for her, and the house was found out where she was; so the post presented her with a letter, the contents whereof were, "Hail, thou good one! I bring thee tidings that the Master calleth for thee, and expecteth ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that very hour. And now, surrounded, like the saint-like personages of olden times, with a radiant halo, that glorified him amid this gloomy night of sin,—as if the departed Governor had left him an inheritance of his glory, or as if he had caught upon himself the distant shine of the celestial city, while looking thitherward to see the triumphant pilgrim pass within its gates,—now, in short, good Father Wilson was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps with a lighted lantern! The glimmer of this luminary suggested the above conceits to Mr. Dimmesdale, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as it is now is no place for people so framed! When life runs high and takes a common form men can walk together as the disciples walked on the road to Emmaus. Christian and Hopeful can pour out their hearts to one another as they travel towards the Celestial City and are knit together in everlasting bonds by the same Christ and the same salvation. But when each man is left to shift for himself, to work out the answers to his own problems, the result is isolation. People who, if they were believers, would find the richest ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... the less real because fancied,) the leathern-faced, gaunt Brummem takes the shape of some Giant Despair with bloody maw and mace,—and he, the child of some Christiana, for whose guiding hand he gropes vainly: she has gone before to the Celestial City! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Castle can be seen no more, and between them and their last rest there remains only the deep river over which there is no bridge, the river of Death. On the hill beyond the waters glitter the towers and domes of the Celestial City; but through the river they must first pass, and they find it deeper or shallower according to the strength of their faith. They go through, Hopeful feeling the bottom all along; Christian still in character, not without some horror, and frightened by hobgoblins. On ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... halo of the scene I saw the beautiful King's Highway, on which were marching the hosts of the church militant, led triumphantly by the Spirit of God to the very gates of the Celestial City, which, though distant, I could yet see under the dazzling light radiating from the central throne of glory as from ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... what it desires. What this artist seems to have aimed at, was to create for the soul amid the pomps and passions of this world a resting-place of contemplation tenanted by saintly and seraphic beings. No pain comes near the folk of his celestial city; no longing poisons their repose; they are not weary, and the wicked trouble them no more. Their cheerfulness is no less perfect than their serenity; like the shades of Hellas, they have drunk Lethean waters from the river of content, and all ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... is the object God has in view in thus breaking the family circle by death? It is that our attention may be attracted to the saints above, and that we may by faith behold the beauties of the Celestial city. ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... delights of the celestial city as pictured in the apocalyptic vision of Saint John, and is in marked contrast to the gloom and sombreness of the Requiem music, as well as the terrors of the Judgment. It is bright, jubilant, and exultant throughout. The title of the prelude is ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... you love.... Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men as brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,—none of the servants. In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions; know that you are alone in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... memory, I believe, will be somewhat enlivened by this picture hereafter: not that I remember it very distinctly even now; but bright things leave a sheen and glimmer in the mind, like Christian's tremulous glimpse of the Celestial City. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... children are taught that one thing they must not do is to run out without a topi. They were looking over The Pilgrim's Progress with me, and at a picture of Christian, bareheaded, approaching the Celestial City, with the rays of the sun very much in evidence, Robert pointed an accusing finger, saying, "John Bunyan, you're in ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... go sweeping through the gates of the celestial city, I said to him: "Memotas, my brother beloved, why are you so anxious to leave us? I hope you will be spared to us a little longer. We need you in the Church and in the village. We want your presence, ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Pilgrim's Progress? Who has not, in childhood, followed the wandering Christian on his way to the Celestial City? Who has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the walls of darkness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... ourselves unless, like the Psalmist, we use the verbs in both tenses, and say, 'One thing have I desired ... that will I seek after.' John Bunyan saw that there was a back door to the lower regions close by the gates of the Celestial City. There may be men who have long lived beneath the shadow of the sanctuary, and at the last will be found ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and supporters alert to capture souls. Of all the influences which affected for evil my young life I perhaps resented most Mrs. Sherwood's "Infant's Progress." There were three children in it going from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City by the route laid down by John Bunyan; but they were handicapped even more severely than the good Christian himself with his heavy burden—for that fell off his back at the first sight of the Cross and Him who was nailed to it, accepted by ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence |
