#paradise

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. (John 11:25-26) ↗

— Anonymous

#charles-dickens #ever-after #everlasting-life #faith #paradise

Totalitarianism is not only hell, but all the dream of paradise-- the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith, without secrets from one another. Andre Breton, too, dreamed of this paradise when he talked about the glass house in which he longed to live. If totalitarianism did not exploit these archetypes, which are deep inside us all and rooted deep in all religions, it could never attract so many people, especially during the early phases of its existence. Once the dream of paradise starts to turn into reality, however, here and there people begin to crop up who stand in its way. and so the rulers of paradise must build a little gulag on the side of Eden. In the course of time this gulag grows ever bigger and more perfect, while the adjoining paradise gets even smaller and poorer. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#paradise #totalitarianism #utopia #age

No, the next time i kiss you it'll last a long, long time. And then when we're done you're gonna realize being turned on is not about experience ↗

— Simone Elkeles

#leaving-paradise #simone-elkeles #experience

...Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative... ↗

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

#freedom

I hope something happens. I'm restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in love and growing domestic. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#love

At night in this part of the West the stars, as I had seen them in Wyoming, were as big as Roman Candles and as lonely as the Prince who's lost his ancestral home and journeys across the spaces trying to find it again, and knows he never will. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#on-the-road #sal-paradise #stars #home

Doom is nigh. I am in acute distress, desperately trying to coax sleep, opening my eyes every few seconds to check their faded gleam, and imagining paradise as a place where a sleepless neighbor reads an endless book by the light of an eternal candle. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#paradise #reading #imagination

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness - And Wilderness is Paradise enow. ↗

— Omar Khayyám

#companionship #life #love #paradise #poetry

I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise. ↗

— Blaise Pascal

#hell #intelligence #paradise #stupidity #intelligence

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

#hospitality #paradise #age