People, when they are frustrated with worldly desires, start changing the object: they start making otherworldly objects of desire - heaven, paradise, and all the joys of heaven. But it is the same trick, the mind is again befooling you. This is not the way of the intelligent person, this is the way of the stupid.
A little common sense, goodwill, and a tiny dose of unselfishness could make this goodly earth into an earthly paradise.
Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand.
Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.
Did you know that Allah promises you a seat in Paradise if you kill a Christian?
I'm a man. I lived it and I'm not afraid to die but when I die I'm going to paradise and I'm not worried.
He who has not been at a tavern knows not what a paradise it is. O holy tavern! O miraculous tavern!--holy, because no carking cares are there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous, because of the spits, which themselves turn round and round!
Terrorism [is] a biological consequence of the multinationals, just as a day of fever is the reasonable price of an effective vaccine. . . The conflict is between great powers, not between demons and heroes. Unhappily, therefore, is the nation that finds the "heroes" underfoot, especially if they still think in religious terms and involve the population in their bloody ascent to an uninhabited paradise.
Into the paradise of euphony, the good poet must introduce hell. Broken paradises are the only kind worth reading.
The very nature of paradise is that it will be lost.
This moment! - this here-now - is forgotten when you start thinking in terms of achieving something. When the achieving mind arises, you lose contact with the paradise you are in.
The music for me is paradise. I think it's where God lives.
The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise?-thus leave Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades?
Then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A Paradise within thee, happier far.
It is possible I never learned the names of birds in order to discover the bird of peace, the bird of paradise, the bird of the soul, the bird of desire. It is possible I avoided learning the names of composers and their music the better to close my eyes and listen to the mystery of all music as an ocean. It may be I have not learned dates in history in order to reach the essence of timelessness. It may be I never learned geography the better to map my own routes and discover my own lands. The unknown was my compass. The unknown was my encyclopedia. The unnamed was my science and progress.
Do we hate paradise so much we need to make sure it becomes a trash heap?
Refuse to seek for the road to paradise, because every beautiful place is already a paradise!
Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, and paradise is when you have none.
The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the union of the states be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened, and the disguised one as the serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into paradise.