# Paradise

Paradise is a religious or metaphysical term for a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and eternal; in contrast to the miseries of normal existence, in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. It is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily one of luxury or idleness, and often described as a "higher" place, the holiest place, in contrast to the normal world, or an underworlds such as Hell.
    See also:
       Heaven
       Kingdom of God

## Quotes

* Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. . . .What a Eutopia - What a Paradise would this region be!
** John Adams, Diaries (22 February 1756)
* In the nine heavens are eight Paradises; Where is the ninth one? In the human breast. Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises, But blessedness dwells in the human breast.
** William R. Alger, "The Ninth Paradise", Poetry of the Orient (1865), p. 223.
* I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
** Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers [El hacedor : literal translation: The Maker] (1960)
** Variant translation: I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.
* If you want to view paradise Simply look around and view it Anything you want to, do it Wanta change the world? There's nothing To it
** Willie Wonka (played by Gene Wilder), Pure Imagination written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (film) (1971)
* I would gladly wander in Paradise, But it is far away and there is no road.
** T'ao Ch'ien, Substance, Shadow, and Spirit, "Shadow replies" (transl. by Arthur Waley).
* Paradise is being able to say at that moment: “I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward. I lived my life and did what I had to do.”.. It’s enough that I keep trying. Even those who didn’t do all they could have done have already been forgiven; they had their punishment while they were alive by being unhappy when they could have been living in peace and harmony. We are all redeemed and free to follow the path that has no beginning and will have no end.
** Paulo Coelho, Aleph (2011)
* This is the Church’s destination: it is, as the Bible says, the “new Jerusalem”, “Paradise”. More than a place, it is a “state” of soul in which our deepest hopes are fulfilled in superabundance and our being, as creatures and as children of God, reach their full maturity. We will finally be clothed in the joy, peace and love of God, completely, without any limit, and we will come face to face with Him! (cf. 1 Cor 13:12). It is beautiful to think of this, to think of Heaven. We will all be there together. It is beautiful, it gives strength to the soul.
** Pope Francis, General Audience, 26 November 2014.
* The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are open paradise.
** Thomas Gray, Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitudes (1754), line 53.
* Aus dem Paradies, das Cantor uns geschaffen, soll uns niemand vertreiben können.
** No one shall expel us from the Paradise that Cantor has created.
** David Hilbert Über das Unendliche (On the Infinite), Math. Ann. 95.
* The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfilment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion. Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; whose land brings forth to them thorns and thistles, Genesis 3:18-19 and whose crops are choked with briars.
** Jerome, Letter 22, p.19; as qtd. in "CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 22 (Jerome)", New Advent, translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.
* In paradise Eve was a virgin, and it was only after the coats of skins that she began her married life. Now paradise is your home too. Keep therefore your birthright and say: Return unto your rest, O my soul.
** Jerome, Letter 22, p.19; as qtd. in "CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 22 (Jerome)", New Advent, translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.
* A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
** Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), St. 12. FitzGerald's translation.
* The notions of hell and purgatory, of paradise and resurrections are all caricatured, distorted echoes of the primeval one Truth, taught humanity in the infancy of its races by every First Messenger—the Planetary Spirit mentioned on the reverse of page the third— and whose remembrance lingered in the memory of man, as Elu of the Chaldees, Osiris the Egyptian, Vishnu, the first Buddahs and so on. p. 48
** Koot Hoomi, in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, (1923)
* "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" is the greatest phrase ever written. If everyone followed that creed, this world would be a paradise.
** Stan Lee, "Unlikely Saints: Stan Lee, Soupy Sales and the Golden Rule", Peter M. Wallace, Huffington Post, 8/10/2010
* This living together of husband and wife—that they occupy the same home, that they take care of the household, that together they produce and bring up children—is a kind of faint image and a remnant, as it were, of that blessed living together [in Eden].
** Martin Luther, “A CRITICAL AND DEVOTIONAL COMMENTARY ON GENESIS”, (1545); BASED ON DR. HENRY COLE'S TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL LATIN. REVISED, ENLARGED, PARTS RETRANSLATED AND EDITED IN COMPLETE FORM BY JOHN NICHOLAS LENKER, D.D.VOL. I.; LUTHERANS IN ALL LANDS CO., MINNEAPOLIS, MINN., U.S.A.1904
* A limbo large and broad, since call'd The Paradise of Fools to few unknown.
** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book III, line 495.
* So on he fares, and to the border comes, Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, As with a rural mound, the champain head Of a steep wilderness.
** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 131.
* Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by black women without a single man among them, and they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with strong passionate hearts and great virtue. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks.
** Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, The Adventures of Esplandián Putnam, 1917, p. 306
* Swamp Thing: In the precambrian...when all the world was weeds...and nothing crawled...or swam...or flew...the earthgods ruled the last non-violent era...'til the sun grows red and swollen and all life is fled.... They could have made their kingdom of plants....as perfect as I'll make the kingdom of men...and there would never have been need...for any other form of life. They would have kept...this planet for their own...and yet did not... I wonder why? Instead...they let the fish glide in...upon the wild, silurian tide...and took their forms...and played with them...yet never made this world a cool piscean paradise... ...Nor when the fish with legs boiled up...from Devonian mud...did they impose reptilian utopia...but watched instead...delighting in the dazzling diversity...of shapes and shades...
   * Alan Moore, Swamp Thing, #64, (September, 1987)
* One morn a Peri at the gate Of Eden stood disconsolate.
** Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Paradise and the Peri.
* He who builds a mosque in the way of Allah, God will build a house for him in the paradise.
** Muhammad, as quoted in Sahih Muslim, Nr. 828; muslim-canada.org
* In the paradise, made by God, all the plants were endowed in the souls and reason, producing for their fruit the different virtues, and, moreover, imperishable wisdom and prudence. ... These statements appear to me to be dictated by a philosophy which is symbolical rather than strictly accurate. For no trees of life or of knowledge have ever at any previous time appeared upon the earth, nor is it likely that any will appear hereafter. But I rather conceive that Moses was speaking in an allegorical spirit, intending by his paradise to intimate the dominant character of the soul, which is full of innumerable opinions as this figurative paradise was of trees.
** Philo, On the Creation of the World.
* Do you think that you will enter Paradise while God has not yet known from among you ones who sacrifice nor ones who be steadfast in belief?
** Quran 3:142
* Or do you think you will enter Paradise, while there has not yet befallen you the such of what befell those who have passed away before you. Persecution and affliction befell them and they were shaken violently, so that the Messenger and those who believed with him said: 'When will the help of God come?' surely the help of God is nigh!
** Quran 2:214
* The word paradise comes from the Persian word pairidaeza, which means "walled garden." ...There never was a Garden of Eden, but there was, perhaps, a Garden of Ediacara... blob-like creatures that lived in the sea...
** Stanley A. Rice, Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-aged Stressed-out World (2011)
* Repeating pain, why? It's all the same, same. I hate this place, stuck in this paradigm. Don't believe in paradise, this must be what Hell is like.
** SZA, "Saturn", Lana (2024)
* She approached the gates of Paradise on earth, and saw the Cherubim guarding the gates of Paradise, and sat down facing the Flaming Sword, for she originated from that flame. When that flame revolved, she fled.
** Zohar 1:119b

### Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

    Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 578-79.
* Or were I in the wildest waste, Sae bleak and bare, sae bleak and bare, The desert were a paradise If thou wert there, if thou wert there.
** Robert Burns, Oh! Wert Thou in the Cold Blast.
* In this fool's paradise, he drank delight.
** George Crabbe, The Borough Players, Letter XII.
* Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.
** Ralph Waldo Emerson, Merlin.
* Unto you is paradise opened.
** II Esdras, VIII. 52.
* Dry your eyes—O dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies.
** John Keats, Fairy Song.
* Mahomet was taking his afternoon nap in his Paradise. An houri had rolled a cloud under his head, and he was snoring serenely near the fountain of Salsabil.
** Ernest L'Epine, Croquemitaine, Book II Chapter IX. Hood's translation.
* The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear, And Paradise hath room for you and me and all.
** Christina G. Rossetti, Saints and Angels, Stanza 10.
* There is no expeditious road To pack and label men for God, And save them by the barrel-load. Some may perchance, with strange surprise, Have blundered into Paradise.
** Francis Thompson, Epilogue, Stanza 2.
* When we speak of "paradise," we must not fall into the trap of imagining it as a physical place with human or earthly characteristics. Paradise is not a place we can describe using the categories we use for our world, such as space, time, matter or energy. These are dimensions of reality that we know and study with science, but paradise goes beyond these limits. Science teaches us that the universe is governed by physical laws that regulate space, time, mass, energy and electrical charges. But what if there is a dimension or reality beyond these laws? We cannot rule out the possibility that a reality might exist outside the co-ordinates of space and time, a reality in which the notions of matter and energy, as we understand them, have no meaning. In the context of this reflection, paradise can be conceived as a reality that transcends all the physical laws of the universe. A reality that is not subject to the limitations of our earthly experience and that cannot be represented with human images or concepts. It is a dimension of existence that, by its very nature, is totally different from everything we know, and for this very reason we cannot imagine it as something anthropomorphic, that is, in our likeness.
** From the Facebook official profile of Antonino Zichichi (in Italian; October 31, 2024) (URL archived on December 2, 2024)