Paradise Quotes

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

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 Khayyám

In this fool's paradise he drank delight

George Grabbe

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 Khayyám

In this fool's paradise he drank delight

George Grabbe

The world is a prison for the believer and paradise for a non-believer.

Anonymous

Make your paradise here on earth, your own little paradise

Bangambiki Habyarimana

How can there ever be any serious expectation of living in paradise, if one cannot behave appropriately, or be trusted to respect and honour all life?

Mango Wodzak

Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life--we went soft, we lost our edge.

Frank Herbert

Deep in the heart of the hot, wet African rainforest, there lives a tribe of peacemakers who share a multiplicity of pleasures and make a very special kind of love. South of the sprawling Congo River, in the midst of war-ravaged territory, some 2,000 miles from the arid Ethiopian desert where the oldest human fossils have been found, lies this lush and steamy jungle paradise, the only natural habitat of the bonobo.

Susan Block

When we parted, on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, I leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek. ‘If you do find paradise,’ she said, turning to leave, ‘send me a grape.

Adam Leith Gollner

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

Henry David Thoreau

If supernatural life in God's paradise is more important than natural life on earth, then the day you received Jesus Christ is more important than the day you were naturally born. Jon 3:6

Felix Wantang

Conservatism -- hard work -- saving one's money -- looking neat and gentlemanly. It was such an Eveless paradise, that.

Theodore Dreiser

You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed.

Michel Faber

Maybe it takes tragedy to create paradise.

Katie Kacvinsky

Loving me is like entering a dungeon with a lot of doors. I cannot guarantee you that you will get the key of every door you come across, I cannot tell you which door leads you where and what is behind it, I cannot assure you that you will head back out again the way you came in. All I can say is if you manage to open every right door and the last one too, I will make you one of my secrets forever, you will see and feel things that you have never come across, which will never let you leave again from the paradise that you have reached.

Akshay Vasu

Kessler depicts his developing intimacy with a handful of dairy goats and offers an enviable glimpse of the pastoral good life. Yet he also cautions, "Wherever the notion of paradise exists, so does the idea that it was lost. Paradise is always in the past." The title Goat Song is a literal rendering of the Greek word traghoudhia, tragedy. Reading it, I was reminded of Leo Marx's analysis of Thoreau's Walden. In The Machine in the Garden, Marx names Thoreau a tragic, if complex pastoralist. After failing to make an agrarian living raising beans for commercial trade (although his intent was always more allegorical than pecuniary), Thoreau ends Walden by replacing the pastoral idea where it originated: in literature. Paradise, Marx concludes, is not ultimately to be found at Walden Pond; it is to be found in the pages of Walden.

Heather Paxson

At some point paradise would be lost.

Haruki Murakami

She'd created her own hell, and now that she had learned to control her fear, she knew how to create her own paradise.

Josephine Angelini

I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.

Henning Mankell

The earth is neither fabulous nor paradisal. And therefore it is not hell.

Jean-Marie G. Le Clézio

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

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

The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

John Milton

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

Victor Hugo

God made salvation the most precious gift for humanity which is why only a few are chosen for God's Paradise in heaven. Matthew 22:11-14

Felix Wantang

she ran away in her sleep and dreamed of paradise

Unknownnown

I will survive: if the hell rejects me, there is always the paradise.

Lara Biyuts

Just past hell lies paradise.Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of that.Serina Hartwell Author of The Hidden Saga

Serina Hartwell

When the sun goes down, melting away his caresses into the sky which consonants with the ocean, lively colors are scattered through the deep pale depth during some short sensuous instants. Later, as by art of magic, light is consumed into the infinite horizon giving space to the poked voidness and its full-cristal-covered vastness. Then, to mystify the night, a marvelous and alluring sentinel rests next to us through the vivid night, just until the next prismatic fest arrives with its celebrating aperture.

Jose A. Arvide

He reached out for her hand and she grabbed onto his. t“Eena, when you’re ready to talk about it, I’ll be here. That’s what best friends are for.”tShe let the tears fall. He’d never know they were for him. He’d think they were because of Derian. They held hands silently throughout the night, Ian unaware that this was by far her most tortured nightmare ever. Paradise so close, and yet completely unattainable.

Richelle E. Goodrich

Indeed, for the righteous is attainment - Gardens and grapevines And full-breasted [companions] of equal age And a full cup. No ill speech will they hear therein or any falsehood - [As] reward from your Lord, [a generous] gift [made due by] account, [From] the Lord of the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them, the Most Merciful. They possess not from Him [authority for] speech.[The Quran, 78:31-37]

Anonymous

A'isha asked him: 'Does one come to Paradise only by the mercy of Allah?' He repeated three times over: 'No one comes to Paradise except by the mercy of Allah!' 'Not even you. Messenger of Allah?' she asked. 'Not even I, unless Allah enfolds me in His mercy.

Anonymous

If you allow yourself to experience the present moment, you will discover that it does not get better than this Paradise is here and now, waiting for you to arrive, to accept, to surrender, and to enjoy.

Victor Shamas

Hell's only the flip side of Paradise. Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the two.

Sara Craven

No ancient Jew was ever promised, or expected, a heavenly life. That was a wild and outrageous teaching of Jesus. Holy text never offers a heavenly hope--before Jesus. Think about it: No matter how faithful Adam would have been, he could never graduate to heaven. Going to heaven was a 'Jesus teaching.' It simply does not exist in Torah.pg xxvii

Michael Ben Zehabe

SOON, he replied, which makes better sense under the rules of that country than ours. VERY SOON! he added, clasping my hands; then, unable to keep from laughing, he pushed off from the rock like a boy going for the first cold swim of spring; and the current got him. The stream was singing aloud, and I heard him singing with it until he dropped away over the edge.

Leif Enger

In the beginning, there was the earth, formless and empty. Darkness hung over the surface of the deep. And then there was light. It spilled over the waters, vast and powerful, and its creation severed the unity that had come before. This light was a separate entity from the darkness. Something novel and cruelly different. The spirits called it “day.” Its opposite was called “night.” Between them was evening and morning—the First Day. This division marked the end of peace in the universe. Everything has been pretty much fucked up since then.

S.M. Reine

All spiritual leaders who live in luxury cannot enter God's Paradise in Heaven. Repent or Perish.

Felix Wantang

I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie, and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise.

Daniel J. Rice

In life, if you are refused membership to a club, you get a refund check for dues paid; what happens to your tithes if Jesus denies you entry to God's Paradise? Mal. 3:10.

Felix Wantang

When you become a Christian, you are not on earth to fight for Jesus; God needed only one battle to redeem the souls of humanity. It was the cross.

Felix Wantang

Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, light-less, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful.But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it.Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns.And then he desired sex.He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. The he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together.Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet.But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied.He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.”And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?

Rabih Alameddine

Heaven is spectacular, some would say paradise. A magnificent city surrounded by walls of gold and rainbow paths all dazzling in Gods light. There is no fear in Heaven, nor is there pain, and most really have found serenity there

Stacey Field

The truth shall set you free only if you cherish the taste of freedom. John 8:31-32

Felix Wantang

Deeply immersed in a constant bubble bath of sin, you cannot communicate with Jesus Christ unless you are ready to get out of the bath. John 1:9

Felix Wantang

When we look at life through the eyes of Jesus Christ, it is absolutely impossible to see any obstacles. Matthew 11:28-30.

Felix Wantang

There is honey in this land sweeter than any I know of, and I have cut cane in places where the dirt itself tasted like sugar, so that's saying a heap.

Toni Morrison

Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise.

Toni Morrison

There is no greater heaven than the heart of a loving motherShe takes care of you when you are still in her womb.She nurtures you after you are born.She hurts when you fall,She celebrates when you make your first steps.She is the only person who genuinely cares about you.She loves you as she loves herself.Her heart is your true paradise.I love you mama.

Bangambiki Habyarimana

There is no greater heaven the heart of a loving mother

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Paradise is the heart of the people who speak well of you; who think fondly about you because of your exemplary life. Hell is is the heart of the people who curse you, who wish you were dead for your evil actions against them

Bangambiki Habyarimana

If my mother will not go to heaven, I renounce the privilege

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Theologians should study in a seminary and before graduating they should make a visit to heaven and hell after which they should submit their thesis and graduate.

Bangambiki Habyarimana

His biggest gripe with religion was the concept of heaven, of paradise, that we could only get there after we died. He said any philosophy that cared more about life after death than life before death wasn’t anything he could believe in. That’s why he called this farm Paradise. He said Paradise was ours if we wanted it. It was ours to make in the here and now, not something out there in the future that we had to wait for.

Tiffany Reisz

All paradises are there to be expelled from.

Amanda Craig

Some men are sent to heaven by torturers who thought they were doing god's work by sending them to hell

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Hell and heaven are within us

Bangambiki Habyarimana

1 2 3 4 Next

Paradise Quotes

Related Topics