It is difficult to write a paradise when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse. It is obviously much easier to find inhabitants for an inferno or even a purgatorio.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
One would not be alone even in Paradise.
—Italian Proverb
It gets to seem as if way back in the Garden of Eden after the Fall, Adam and Eve had begged the Lord to forgive them and He, in his boundless exasperation, had said, “All right, then. Stay. Stay in the Garden. Get civilized. Procreate. Muck it up.” And they did.
—Diane Arbus (1923–71) American Photographer
Taking the first step with the good thought, the second with the good word, and the third with the good deed, I enter paradise.
—Persian Proverb
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 (1926–2017) American Columnist
With a piece of bread in your hand you’ll find paradise under a pine tree.
—Russian Proverb
Two Paradises t’were in one, to live in Paradise alone.
—Andrew Marvell (1621–78) English Metaphysical Poet
Everyone who has ever built anywhere a “new heaven” first found the power thereto in his own hell.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Hell shared with a sage is better than paradise with a fool.
—Yiddish Proverb
Paradise can be found on the back of horses, in books and between the breasts of women
—Arabic Proverb
If God hath made this world so fair, where sin and death abound, how beautiful, beyond compare, will paradise be found.
—James Montgomery (1771–1854) Scottish Poet, Journalist, Hymnist
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940) Lithuanian-American Anarchist, Feminist
We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.
—Lionel Trilling (1905–75) American Literary Critic
Patience is the key to paradise.
—Common Proverb
The only paradise is paradise lost.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
Remembrance is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away. Indeed our first parents were not to be deprived of it.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
You cannot get into Paradise without a guide.
—Turkish Proverb
From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.
—Lucretius (c.99–55 BCE) Roman Epicurean Poet, Philosopher
I shall speak of how melancholy and utopia preclude one another. How they fertilize one another… of the revulsion that follows one insight and precedes the next… of superabundance and surfeit. Of stasis in progress. And of myself, for whom melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.
—Gunter Grass (1927–2015) German Novelist, Poet
Every man has a paradise around him till he sins and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden. And even then there are holy hours, when this angel sleeps, and man comes back, and with the innocent eyes of a child looks into his lost paradise again—into the broad gates and rural solitudes of nature.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
A man yearns for his paradise but it could become his hell.
—Icelandic Proverb
Santa Barbara is a paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the U.S. is a paradise. Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise. There is no other.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
Thought would destroy their paradise.
—Thomas Gray (1716–71) English Poet, Book Collector
Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply. We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, “How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?”
—William Golding (1911–93) English Novelist
Who kisses the feet of his mother, kisses the step of Paradise.
—Turkish Proverb
A wife should be as humble as a lamb, busy as a bee, as beautiful as a bird of paradise and faithful as a turtle dove.
—Russian Proverb
Without the companionship even paradise would be boring.
—Arabic Proverb
Without human companions, paradise itself would be an undesirable place.
—African Proverb
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