PARADISE QUOTES

quotations about paradise

Paradise quote

A book of verses underneath the bough
A flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness is paradise now

OMAR KHAYYAM

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Much better an intelligent hell than a stupid paradise.

VICTOR HUGO

Ninety-Three

Tags: Victor Hugo


Paradise is not a garden of bliss and changeless perfection where the lions lie down like lambs (what would they eat?) and the angels and cherubim and seraphim rotate in endless idiotic circles, like clockwork, about an equally inane and ludicrous -- however roseate -- unmoved mover. That particular painted fantasy of a realm beyond time and space which Aristotle and the church fathers tried to palm off on us has met, in modern times, only neglect and indifference passing on into oblivion it so richly deserved, while the paradise of which I write and wish to praise is with us yet, the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real earth on which we stand.

EDWARD ABBEY

Desert Solitaire

Tags: Edward Abbey


Doom is nigh. I am in acute distress, desperately trying to coax sleep, opening my eyes every few seconds to check their faded gleam, and imagining paradise as a place where a sleepless neighbor reads an endless book by the light of an eternal candle.

VLADIMIR NABOKOV

Speak, Memory

Tags: Vladimir Nabokov


Take me down
To the paradise city
Where the grass is green
And the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home

GUNS N' ROSES

"Paradise City"


A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.

THOMAS FULLER

The Holy State and the Profane State

Tags: Thomas Fuller


Postulating a heaven gives man an out for having been unable to retain the paradise he was given here on earth.

SHERI S. TEPPER

A Plague of Angels


A person who has not completely lost the memory of paradise, even though it is a faint one, will suffer endlessly. He will feel the call of the essential world, will hear the voice that comes from so far away that one cannot find out where it comes from, a voice that cannot guide him.

EUGENE IONESCO

Present Past / Past Present

Tags: Eugene Ionesco


The whole of human history is thus enfolded in the subtle interplay of sorrow over a lost paradise, and the hope of its final restoration.

ALISTER E. MCGRATH

A Brief History of Heaven


A chaste generation would restore Paradise.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk

Tags: Amos Bronson Alcott


The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

MARCEL PROUST

Time Regained

Tags: Marcel Proust


Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.

DOUG LARSON

attributed, Asterisk: The Future of Telephony

Tags: Doug Larson


When the storm is over and night falls and the moon is out in all its glory and all you're left with is the rhythm of the sea, of the waves, you know what God intended for the human race, you know what paradise is.

HAROLD PINTER

Party Time

Tags: Harold Pinter


How small these rescued tides appear! Earthly delights flow in torrents. Each object offers paradise.

ANDRÉ BRETON

The Magnetic Fields

Tags: Andre Breton


A cowchip is paradise for a fly.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's

Tags: Ken Alstad


Paradise is not a place, it's a state of mind.

ANONYMOUS

Tags: Anonymous quotes


The possibility of paradise hovers on the cusp of coming into being, so much so that it takes powerful forces to keep such a paradise at bay. If paradise now arises in hell, it's because in the suspension of the usual order and the failure of most systems, we are free to live and act another way.

REBECCA SOLNIT

A Paradise Built in Hell

Tags: Rebecca Solnit


Paradise was always over there, a day's sail away.

J. MAARTEN TROOST

Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu


See the wretch that long has tost
On the thorny bed of pain,
At length repair his vigour lost,
And breathe and walk again:
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

Tags: Thomas Gray


Only animals were not expelled from Paradise.

MILAN KUNDERA

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Tags: Milan Kundera