Victor Hugo - Scarface 1983 - Blaise Pascal - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Jorge Luis Borges - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus - John Milton - The Business 2005 - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Thomas Fuller - Jonathan Miller & Steven Weinberg TV - Franz Kafka - Anne Finch - Joni Mitchell - Reinhold Niebuhr - Friedrich von Schiller - Percy Bysshe Shelley - Francis Thompson - Lost Horizon 1937 - F Scott Fitzgerald - Marcel Proust - Omar Khayyam - Exodus 3:8 - Luke 23:43 - Koran 2:214 - Vladimir Nabokov - Natural World: Hawaii: Message in the Waves TV - Trailer Park Boys 2001-2018 -
The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor. Victor Hugo
This is paradise. This is paradise, I’m tellin’ you. This town’s like a great big pussy just waitin’ to get fucked. I'm tellin’ you. I shoulda come here 10 years ago. I’d have been a millionaire by this time. By this time, I’d have had my own boat, my own car, my own golf course. Scarface 1983 ***** starring Al Pacino & Michelle Pfeiffer & Steven Bauer & Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio & Robert Loggia & Miria Colon & F Murray Abraham et al, director Brian de Palma, Tony
I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise. Blaise Pascal
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread.
For he on honey-dew hath fed.
And drunk the milk of paradise. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found the flower in his hand when he awoke – Aye! And what then? Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Anima Poetae
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Jorge Luis Borges
Your library is your paradise. Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
Then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far. John Milton, Paradise Lost 12:585
They looking back all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy set. ibid. 12:641
Ten years of paradise, living the dream, it had to come to an end sometime. The Business 2005 starring Danny Dyer & Tamer Hassan & Geoff Bell & Georgina Chapman & Linda Henry & Roland Manookian & Camille Coduri & Andy Parfitt et al, director Nick Love
It’s easy to be a saint in paradise. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s2e21: The Maquis II, Sisko to Kira
A fool’s paradise is a wise man’s hell. Thomas Fuller
People who crash aeroplanes into office buildings in order to destroy them must really believe in paradise. Jonathan Miller, The Atheism Tapes, Steven Weinberg
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. Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms
Give me yet before I die
A sweet, yet absolute retreat,
’Mongst paths so lost and trees so high
That the world may ne’er invade
Through such windings and such shade. Anne Finch, The Petition for an Absolute Retreat, 1713
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot … Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi, 1970
Our gadget-filled paradise suspended in a hell of international insecurity. Reinhold Niebuhr, Pious and Secular America
One moment spent in Paradise
Is not too dearly paid for with one’s life. Friedrich von Schiller, Don Carlos, 1787
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonis, 1821
There is no expeditious road
To pack and label men for God,
And save them by the barrel-load.
Some by perchance, with strange surprise,
Have blundered into Paradise. Francis Thompson, A Judgement in Heaven, 1913
In these days of wars and rumours of wars – haven’t you ever dreamed of a place where there was peace and security, where living was not a struggle but a lasting delight? Lost Horizon 1937 ***** starring Ronald Colman & Jane Wyatt & H B Warner & Sam Jaffe & John Howard & Edward Everett Horton & Thomas Mitchell & Margo & Isabel Jewell & David Clyde & David Torrence et al, director Frank Capra, opening credits; viz also novel James Hilton
I’m not going to have an army. I’m going to disband mine. And sink my battleships. I’m going to destroy every piece of warcraft. Then when the enemy approaches, we’ll say, Come in, gentlemen. What can we do for you? ibid. Robert Conway on plane
This is where civilisation ends. We must be a thousand miles beyond it. ibid. Robert Conway
Welcome to Shangri-la. ibid. Chang
Do you ever want to see what’s on the other side of the hill? ibid. Robert Conway
Our general belief was in moderation. We preach the virtue of avoiding excesses of every kind. ibid. Chang
What makes a criminal? Lack usually. ibid. Chang
We like to believe it is the absence of struggle in the way we live. ibid. Chang
We need men like you here to be sure that our community will continue to thrive. ibid. High Lama
Of course to be candid, father, a prolonged future doesn’t excite me. It would have to have a point. I’ve sometimes doubted whether Life itself has any. ibid. Conway to High Lama
Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is. What blindness. What an intelligent leadership. A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other. A peril by an orgy of greed and brutality. The time must come, my friend, when this orgy will spend itself. When brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. ibid. High Lama to Conway
Something grand and beautiful, George. Something I’ve been searching for all my life. The answer to the confusion and bewilderment of a lifetime. ibid. Conway
I believe it because I want to believe it. ibid. Lord Gainsford in London
In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost. Marcel Proust
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 Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 1120
A land flowing with milk and honey. Exodus 3:8
Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. Luke 23:43