Singing hymns and waving palm branches through all eternity is pretty when you hear about it in the pulpit, but it's as poor a way to put in valuable time as a body could contrive.
- Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of truth that there is a future life...and yet--I am strongly inclined to expect one.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

There is no humor in heaven.
- Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

Let us swear while we may, for in Heaven it will not be allowed.
- Notebook, 1898

...heaven for climate, and hell for society.
- Mark Twain's Speechs, 1910 edition, p. 117.

Dying man couldn't make up his mind which place to go to -- both have their advantages, "heaven for climate, hell for company!"
- Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, vol. 3

Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague curiosity about one of those.
- Letter to William Dean Howells, May 20, 1891

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

We may not doubt that society in heaven consists mainly of undesirable persons.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

Bermuda: I said it was like being in Heaven. The Reverend rebukingly and rather pointedly advised me to make the most of it then.
- "Rambling Notes on an Idle Excursion"

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

It is easy to see that the inventor of the heaven did not originate the idea, but copied it from the show-ceremonies of some sorry little sovereign State up in the back settlements of the Orient somewhere.
- Letters from the Earth

The inventor of their heaven empties into it all the nations of the earth, in one common jumble. All are on an equality absolute, no one of them ranking another; they have to be "brothers"; they have to mix together, pray together, harp together, hosannah together--whites, niggers, Jews, everybody--there's no distinction. Here in the earth all nations hate each other, and every one of them hates the Jew. Yet every pious person adores that heaven and wants to get into it. He really does. And when he is in a holy rapture he thinks he thinks that if he were only there he would take all the populace to his heart, and hug, and hug, and hug!
- Letters from the Earth

It would be a wonderful experience to stand there in those enchanted surroundings and hear Shakespeare and Milton and Bunyan read from their noble works. And it might be that they would like to hear me read some of my things. No, it could never be; they would not care for me. They would not know me, they would not understand me, and they would say they had an engagement. But if I could only be there, and walk about and look, and listen, I should be satisfied and not make a noise. My life is fading to its close, and someday I shall know.
- "About Cities in the Sun" unpublished book review of The Cities of the Sun by George Warder (1901); quoted in Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age, Harold K. Bush, Jr. (2007)

Of all the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go any length for it-risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself. and what do you think he has done? He has left it out of his heaven! Prayer takes its place.
- Notebook, 1906