37 Paradise-Inspired Quotes

Who hasn't dreamt of escaping to paradise every now and then? Whether it's a serene beach, a lush forest, or simply a state of unparalleled tranquility, paradise means something unique to all of us. We've gathered a selection of the top 37 paradise-inspired quotes that capture the essence of these blissful moments and places. From literary greats to modern-day visionaries, these quotes will transport you to your personal oasis, even if just for a moment. So sit back, relax, and let these words take you on a journey to your own version of paradise.

1. “We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.{Letter from the commissioners, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786}” - Thomas Jefferson

2. “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. “Certainly paradise, whatever, wherever it be, contains flaws. (Paradisical flaws, if you like.) If it did not, it would be incapable of drawing the hearts of men or angels.” - Henry Miller

4. “Everything was chocolate ice cream and kisses and wind.” - Francesca Lia Block

5. “When I am a good host, I can order the world precisely as I believe it ought to be. It is a world that I have created in my mind and in my own image, and it gladdens me profoundly to see it unfold without original sin, without expulsions and floods and disobedience and illness. When I am a good guest, I have returned to Eden, where everything I need is provided for me, including companionship and a benevolent deity at my shoulder serving me and protecting me. The concept of paradise may be backward-looking but the concept of heaven is anticipatory. Perhaps this is what heaven will be like? A great table of oak worn smooth with age and candle wax; a dimly lit room, a quartet of angels playing Sarah Vaughan in the corner; this blissful throb of quiet, intelligent conversation; bubbling pots and aromatic stews that no one seems to have worked to prepare; and you - you have nothing to worry about, not now, not here, not for all eternity. Leave it all behind at the threshold, forget everything, for here in heaven, you are my guest. ” - Jesse Browner

6. “You deal with mythological stuff for a few years, you learn that paradises are usually places where you get killed.” - Rick Riordan

7. “I don't like Paradise,As they probably don't have obsessions there.” - Alda Merini

8. “How small these rescued tides appear! Earthly delights flow in torrents. Each object offers paradise.” - André Breton

9. “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

10. “This is a paradise of rising to the occasion that points out by contrast how the rest of the time most of us fall down from the heights of possibility, down into diminished selves and dismal societies. Many now do not even hope for a better society, but they recognize it when they encounter it, and that discovery shines out even through the namelessness of their experience. Others recognize it, grasp it, and make something of it, and long-term social and political transformations, both good and bad, arise from the wreckage. The door to this ear's potential paradises is in hell.” - Rebecca Solnit

11. “Now comes the mystery! (last words)” - Henry Ward Beecher

12. “I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place goodbye so regretfully. I have not once thought of business, or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness, and the memory of it will remain with me always.” - Mark Twain

13. “Whoever treads a path seeking knowledge, Allah will make easy for him the path to Paradise."(reported by Ibn Majah and others, fulfilling the conditions of Imam al Bukhari and Imam Muslim)” - Anonymous

14. “Only add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith; Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love, By name to come called charity, the soul Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise; but shalt possess A paradise within thee, happier far.” - John Milton

15. “By having good memories on every place you just visit, you are building paradise in your own heart and your life.” - Toba Beta

16. “[Über das Paradies:] Die fünf Bücher Mose, die Genesis und der Koran beschäftigen sich eingehend mit dieser hysterischen Geographie. Die muslimische Variante ist jedoch am gelungensten und lohnt wirklich die Lektüre: Bäche, Gärten, Flüsse, Quellen, Blumenbeete, jede Menge Früchte und wunderbare Getränke, großäugige Houris, allzeit jungfräulich, liebenswürdige junge Menschen, Betten im Überfluß, prächtige Kleider, wunderbare Stoffe, außergewöhnlicher Schmuck, Gold, Perlen, Parfums, kostbares Geschirr ... es fehlt nichts in diesem Werbeprospekt des ontologischen Fremdenverkehrsamtes.” - Michel Onfray

17. “After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication.” - William L. Stull

18. “Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.” - Jules Renard

19. “God hides the fires of hell within paradise.” - Paulo Coelho

20. “I mean only that I hope they find darkness or paradise without fear of it, if they can.” - Erin Morgenstern

21. “In monasteries, seminaries, retreats and synagogues, they fear hell and seek paradise. Those who know the mysteries of God never let that seed be planted in their souls.” - Omar Khayyám

22. “Super-luxury hotels are being built in outer space.The new type of heaven is being offered to humans.” - Toba Beta

23. “God's command to have dominion over every living thing is a call to service, a test of responsibility, a rule of love, a cooperation with nature, whereas Satan's use of force for the sake of getting gain renders the earth uninhabitable. Brigham Young's views on the environment direct attention to man's responsibility to beautify the earth, to eradicate the influences of harmful substances, and to use restraint, that the earth may return to its paradisiacal glory.” - Hugh Nibley

24. “We'll tell him his mother waits for him in heaven, I suppose." "Is that a lie?" "It's what we tell fools and children." She sighed. "Postulating a heaven gives man an out for having been unable to retain the paradise he was given here on earth.” - Sheri S. Tepper

25. “Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness -And Wilderness is Paradise enow.” - Omar Khayyám

26. “Paradise will be a kind of library” - Jorge Luis Borges

27. “Feathers!" spluttered Sargatanas. "Feathers are for the birds, my boy. Flaking, peeling, scale-ridden wings, now that's what real beings wear. I'll tell you a secret." He said, and drew me closer. "The eternal pain at having known Paradise and lost it is priceless. I wouldn't swap it for anything.” - George Pendle

28. “The earth is neither fabulous nor paradisal. And therefore it is not hell.” - j.m.g. le clezio

29. “Wherever you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, because evil loves paradise as much as good.” - Wallace Stegner

30. “I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.” - Blaise Pascal

31. “I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.” - Henning Mankell

32. “I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!” - Roman Payne

33. “Since both the departed saints and we ourselves are in Christ, we share with them in the 'communion of saints.' They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist they are there with us, along with the angels and archangels. Why then should we not pray for and with them? The reason the Reformers and their successors did their best to outlaw praying for the dead was because that had been so bound up with the notion of purgatory and the need to get people out of it as soon as possible. Once we rule out purgatory, I see no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead and every reason why we should - not that they will get out of purgatory but that they will be refreshed and filled with God's joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God?” - N.T. Wright

34. “She expressed an opinion that the happiness of a woman in Paradise is beneath the soles of her husband's feet,' he enlightened humorously, seemingly not at all averse to her obvious desire to be comforted.” - Margaret Rome

35. “Hell's only the flip side of Paradise. Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the two.” - Sara Craven

36. “The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” - John Milton

37. “A dying man asked a dying man for eternal life; a man without possessions asked a poor man for a Kingdom; a thief at the door of death asked to die like a thief and steal Paradise. One would have thought a saint would have been the first soul purchased over the counter of Calvary by the red coins of Redemption, but in the Divine plan it was a thief who was the escort of the King of kings into Paradise. If Our Lord had come merely as a teacher, the thief would never have asked for forgiveness. But since the thief's request touched the reason of His coming to earth, namely, to save souls, the thief heard the immediate answer:'I promise thee, this day thou shalt beWith Me in Paradise'(Luke 23:43)It was the thief's last prayer, perhaps even his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything, and found everything. When even the disciples were doubting and only one was present at the Cross, the thief owned and acknowledged Him as Saviour.” - Fulton J. Sheen