Paradise

religious term for a place of eternal and harmonious existence

Paradise is a religious or metaphysical term for a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and eternal; in contrast to the miseries of normal existence, in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. It is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily one of luxury or idleness, and often described as a "higher" place, the holiest place, in contrast to the normal world, or an underworlds such as Hell.

They will build houses and live in them, and they will plant vineyards and eat their fruitage. They will not build for someone else to inhabit, nor will they plant for others to eat. For the days of my people will be like the days of a tree, and the work of their hands my chosen ones will enjoy to the full.
~ Isaiah 65:21-22, NWT
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
She approached the gates of Paradise on earth, and saw the Cherubim guarding the gates of Paradise, and sat down facing the Flaming Sword, for she originated from that flame. When that flame revolved, she fled. ~ Zohar 1:119b
See also:
Heaven
Kingdom of God

Quotes

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  • Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. . . .What a Eutopia - What a Paradise would this region be!
  • In the nine heavens are eight Paradises;
    Where is the ninth one? In the human breast.

    Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises,
    But blessedness dwells in the human breast.
  • I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
    • Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers [El hacedor : literal translation: The Maker] (1960)
    • Variant translation: I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.
  • If you want to view paradise
    Simply look around and view it
    Anything you want to, do it
    Wanta change the world?
    There's nothing
    To it
  • I would gladly wander in Paradise,
    But it is far away and there is no road.
    • T'ao Ch'ien, Substance, Shadow, and Spirit, "Shadow replies" (transl. by Arthur Waley).
  • Paradise is being able to say at that moment: “I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward. I lived my life and did what I had to do.”.. It’s enough that I keep trying. Even those who didn’t do all they could have done have already been forgiven; they had their punishment while they were alive by being unhappy when they could have been living in peace and harmony. We are all redeemed and free to follow the path that has no beginning and will have no end.
  • This is the Church’s destination: it is, as the Bible says, the “new Jerusalem”, “Paradise”. More than a place, it is a “state” of soul in which our deepest hopes are fulfilled in superabundance and our being, as creatures and as children of God, reach their full maturity. We will finally be clothed in the joy, peace and love of God, completely, without any limit, and we will come face to face with Him! (cf. 1 Cor 13:12). It is beautiful to think of this, to think of Heaven. We will all be there together. It is beautiful, it gives strength to the soul.
  • 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 (1754), line 53.
  • Aus dem Paradies, das Cantor uns geschaffen, soll uns niemand vertreiben können.
    • No one shall expel us from the Paradise that Cantor has created.
    • David Hilbert Über das Unendliche (On the Infinite), Math. Ann. 95.
  • The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfilment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion. Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; whose land brings forth to them thorns and thistles, Genesis 3:18-19 and whose crops are choked with briars.
    • Jerome, Letter 22, p.19; as qtd. in "CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 22 (Jerome)", New Advent, translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.
  • In paradise Eve was a virgin, and it was only after the coats of skins that she began her married life. Now paradise is your home too. Keep therefore your birthright and say: Return unto your rest, O my soul.
    • Jerome, Letter 22, p.19; as qtd. in "CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 22 (Jerome)", New Advent, translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.
  • 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!
  • The notions of hell and purgatory, of paradise and resurrections are all caricatured, distorted echoes of the primeval one Truth, taught humanity in the infancy of its races by every First Messenger—the Planetary Spirit mentioned on the reverse of page the third— and whose remembrance lingered in the memory of man, as Elu of the Chaldees, Osiris the Egyptian, Vishnu, the first Buddahs and so on. p. 48
  • This living together of husband and wife—that they occupy the same home, that they take care of the household, that together they produce and bring up children—is a kind of faint image and a remnant, as it were, of that blessed living together [in Eden].
  • So on he fares, and to the border comes,
    Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
    Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
    As with a rural mound, the champain head
    Of a steep wilderness.
  • Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by black women without a single man among them, and they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with strong passionate hearts and great virtue. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks.
  • One morn a Peri at the gate
    Of Eden stood disconsolate.
  • In the paradise, made by God, all the plants were endowed in the souls and reason, producing for their fruit the different virtues, and, moreover, imperishable wisdom and prudence. ... These statements appear to me to be dictated by a philosophy which is symbolical rather than strictly accurate. For no trees of life or of knowledge have ever at any previous time appeared upon the earth, nor is it likely that any will appear hereafter. But I rather conceive that Moses was speaking in an allegorical spirit, intending by his paradise to intimate the dominant character of the soul, which is full of innumerable opinions as this figurative paradise was of trees.
    • Philo, On the Creation of the World.
  • Do you think that you will enter Paradise while God has not yet known from among you ones who sacrifice nor ones who be steadfast in belief?
    • Quran 3:142
  • Or do you think you will enter Paradise, while there has not yet befallen you the such of what befell those who have passed away before you. Persecution and affliction befell them and they were shaken violently, so that the Messenger and those who believed with him said: 'When will the help of God come?' surely the help of God is nigh!
    • Quran 2:214
  • The word paradise comes from the Persian word pairidaeza, which means "walled garden." ...There never was a Garden of Eden, but there was, perhaps, a Garden of Ediacara... blob-like creatures that lived in the sea...
  • Repeating pain, why? It's all the same, same. I hate this place, stuck in this paradigm. Don't believe in paradise, this must be what Hell is like.
  • She approached the gates of Paradise on earth, and saw the Cherubim guarding the gates of Paradise, and sat down facing the Flaming Sword, for she originated from that flame. When that flame revolved, she fled.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear,
And Paradise hath room for you and me and all. ~ Christina G. Rossetti
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 578-79.
  • Or were I in the wildest waste,
    Sae bleak and bare, sae bleak and bare,
    The desert were a paradise
    If thou wert there, if thou wert there.
  • In this fool's paradise, he drank delight.
  • Nor count compartments of the floors,
    But mount to paradise
    By the stairway of surprise.
  • Unto you is paradise opened.
  • Dry your eyes—O dry your eyes,
    For I was taught in Paradise
    To ease my breast of melodies.
  • Mahomet was taking his afternoon nap in his Paradise. An houri had rolled a cloud under his head, and he was snoring serenely near the fountain of Salsabil.
    • Ernest L'Epine, Croquemitaine, Book II Chapter IX. Hood's translation.
  • The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear,
    And Paradise hath room for you and me and all.
  • There is no expeditious road
    To pack and label men for God,
    And save them by the barrel-load.
    Some may perchance, with strange surprise,
    Have blundered into Paradise.
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