Three are the things still left in paradise: stars, flowers and children.
Dante Alighieri
Attributed.

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now - only much, much better.
Laurie Anderson

Paradise is open to all kind hearts.
Pierre Jean de Beranger

The best and sweetest flowers of Paradise God gives to his people when they are upon their knees. Prayer is the gate of heaven, a key to let us in to Paradise.
Thomas Brooks

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

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

When Man, expell'd from Eden's bowers,
A moment linger'd near the gate,
Each scene recall'd the vanish'd hours,
And bade him curse his future fate.
But, wandering on through distant climes,
He learnt to bear his load of grief;
Just gave a sigh to other times,
And found in busier scenes relief.
Thus, lady! will it be with me,
And I must view thy charms no more;
For, while I linger near to thee,
I sigh for all I knew before.
In flight I shall be surely wise,
Escaping from temptation's snare;
I cannot view my paradise
Without the wish of dwelling there.
Lord Byron
To a Lady, On Being asked my reason for quitting England in the Spring.

When non-believers try to imagine Paradise, they only dream of a livable Hell.
Paul Claudel

It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
Evelyn Waugh

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 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Translated from the Persian by Edward FitzGerald.

Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain - This life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Translated from the Persian by Edward FitzGerald.

A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
Thomas Fuller

A worker's paradise is a consumer's hell.
Esther Dyson

He that will enter into Paradise must come with the right key.
Thomas Fuller

Paradise is our native country, and we in this world be as exiles and strangers.
Richard Greenham

We were expelled from Paradise, but Paradise was not destroyed. In a sense our expulsion from Paradise was a stroke of luck, for had we not been expelled, Paradise would have had to be destroyed.
Franz Kafka

If you cannot catch a Bird of Paradise, better take a wet hen.
Nikita Kruschev

I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of silence and happening, and get some sense, for a moment, that we are full of paradise without knowing it.
Thomas Merton

May I remind the poor dreamers of any Paradise Regained that God completely failed with the creation of this world. Why would He be successful with the other one?
Paul Morand

This world is a prison for the Faithful, but a Paradise for unbelievers.
Muhammad

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The only paradise is paradise lost.
Marcel Proust

A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death.
Ernest Hemingway

Ideas of Paradise are exceedingly various. To the Ancients Paradise meant a dolce far niente in the Elysian fields - The Scythians believed in a Paradise of immortal drunkenness and drinking blood out of the skulls of their enemies - To some I believe Paradise means yachting, and for my own part, I think a 200 ton schooner, a ten knot breeze, and a summer sea hard to beat.
Edward Sullivan

Patience is the key to paradise.
Turkish Proverb

The path to paradise begins in hell.
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy.

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