This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Paradise is open to all kind hearts." - Pierre-Jean de Béranger
"There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead, choose death because we cannot forget quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings; remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do this, the way lies open to a new paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death." - Albert Einstein
"We are here for communion with God who is Love, the One in whose image and likeness each one of us is made. We find this communion by loving as God loves us... The miracle of all miracles is the ability to transform through love the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail of the routine drudgery of everyday existence into paradise; the ability to become ourselves, at each moment, a fresh paradise to those around us, thereby becoming “gods by grace” for those who are “gods” to us. Each person accepts or rejects communion with God in his or her own unique manner... The act of communion comes always as grace. For those who know it, it is not life’s meaning, purpose or goal. It is life itself: God with us making us what God is." - Thomas Hopko
"The world is a mirror of Infinite Beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God." - Aldous Leonard Huxley
"The heart of him who truly loves is a paradise on earth; he has God in himself, for God is love." - Abbé Hugo Felicite de Lamennais
"He that does good for good's sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both [at last] in the end." - William Penn
"Gaze not on beauty too much, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burn thee. If thou like it, it deceives thee; if thou love it, it disturbs thee; if thou hunt after it, it destroys thee. If virtue accompany it, it is the heart’s paradise; if vice associate it, it is the soul’s purgatory. It is the wise man’s bonfire, and the fool’s furnace." - Francis Quarles
"The fountain of beauty is the heart, and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber. If virtue accompanies beauty it is the heart's paradise; if vice be associate with it, it is the soul's purgatory. It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fools furnace." - Francis Quarles
"A good conscience is paradise." - Arminius, also known as Armin or Hermann NULL
"To keep from gravitating toward genocidal conflict, we must stop demanding perpetual progress. For quiet nonpolitical reasons, governments and politicians cannot achieve the paradise they habitually promise. Political leaders who continue to dangle before their constituents enticing carrots that are becoming unattainable hasten the erosion of faith in political processes. Circumstances have ceased to be what they were when the once-New World’s myth of limitlessness made sense." - William R. Catton, Jr.
"Memory is a paradise out of which fate cannot drive us." - Alexander Dumas
"This age of childhood, in which the sense of shame is unknown, seems a paradise when we look back upon it alter, and paradise itself is nothing but the mass-phantasy of the childhood of the individual. This is why in paradise men are naked and unashamed, until the moment arrives when shame and fear awaken; expulsion follows, and sexual life and cultural development begin." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Occupation was one of the pleasures of paradise, and we cannot be happy without it." - Anna Jameson
"I say to you truly, the heart of him who loves is a paradise on earth; he has God in himself, for God is love." - Abbé Hugo Felicite de Lamennais
"The surest eventuality in life is death... You always have to do your best in whatever work comes your way. Only then can you express your gratitude for having been endowed with life. Only then can you rest assured of reaching paradise after death." - Ayano Otani
"The humble soul is a temple of God, a seat of wisdom, a throne of the word, a house of the consoler, a room of the bridegroom, the receiver of the covenant, a golden throne of grace, a tabernacle of holiness, a place of holy peace, a paradise of pleasure, a closed garden, a sealed fountain, a heavenly dwelling place." - Johann Arndt
"Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God’s paradise." - Phillips Brooks
"Love has the sweetness of the future world, of paradise… The goal of life is love." - Yehuda Burla
"Life is a paradise for those who love many things with a passion." - Leo Busacaglia
"If on earth there be a Paradise of Bliss, it is this, it is this, it is this." - Ferdowsi or Firdausi or Firdusi, formally Hakīm Abu'l-Qāsim Firdowsī Tūsī, born Abu Ol-Qasem Mansur NULL
"It is the emancipation from the security of Paradise which is the basis for man’s truly human development." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?" - Arthur Asher Miller
"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more then they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"There are two main human sins from which all others derive: impatience and indolence. Because of impatience they were expelled from Paradise, because of indolence they don't return." - Franz Kafka
"In Hell there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, being a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself, is the paradise of the worthless." - George Bernard Shaw
"He who wins honor through his neighbor’s shame will never reach Paradise." - Hebrew Proverbs
"The earth is a Paradise, the only one we will ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise - it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it." - Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
"Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise." - Horace Mann
"What a superlatively grand and consoling idea is that of death! Without this radiant idea - this delightful morning star, indicting that the luminary of eternity is going to rise, life would, to my view, darken into midnight melancholy. The expectation of living here, and living thus always, would be indeed a prospect of overwhelming despair. But thanks to that fatal decree that dooms us to die; thanks to that gospel which opens the vision of an endless life; and thanks above all to that Saviour friend who has promised to conduct the faithful through the sacred trance of death, into scenes of Paradise and everlasting delight." - John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
"Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith’. Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressible sweet in greater love." - Martin Luther
"You talk about Marshall McLuhan’s idea of TV connecting us all in one “global village.” I believe mass communication has helped make us all closer today than we’ve ever been. And I believe that the gathering and dissemination of worthwhile information to all the peoples of the world is the most important tool we have for achieving the end of realizing that our planet is the address for paradise." - Ted Turner, fully Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III
"The world is a mirror of infinite Beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God." - Thomas Traherne
"Paradise is wherever I am." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"A fair woman is a paradise to the eye, a purgatory to the purse, and a hell to the soul." - Elizabeth Grymeston (or Grimston)
"Our memories are the only paradise from which we can never be expelled." - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be driven. " - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape." - John Lancaster Spalding
"When the rabbis speak of paradise and hell...these are only metaphors for the agony of sin and the happiness of virtue." - Kaufmann Kohler
"Put bluntly, there is an archaic God, a magic God, a mythic God, a mental God, and an integral God. Which God do you believe in? An archaic God sees divinity in any strong instinctual force. A magic God locates divine power in the human ego and its magical capacity to change the animistic world with rituals and spells. A mythic God is located not on this earth but in a heavenly paradise not of this world, entrance to which is gained by living according to the covenants and rules given by this God to his peoples. A mental God is a rational God, a demythologized Ground of Being that underlies all forms of existence. And an integral God is one that embraces all of the above. Which of those Gods is the most important? According to an integral view, all of them, because each "higher" stage actually builds upon and includes the lower, so the lower stages are more fundamental and the higher stages are more significant, but leave out any one of them and you're in trouble. You are, that is, less than integral, less than comprehensive, less than inclusive in your understanding of God." - Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
"Curiosity, that is, the separate drive to explore the world disinterestedly, without being stimulated by danger or physiological dissatisfaction, is, according to students of evolution, rooted in specific morphological characteristics of our species and thus cannot be eliminated from our minds as long as our species retains its identity. As both Pandora’s most deplorable accident and the adventures of our progenitors in Paradise testify, curiosity has been a main cause of all the calamities and misfortunes that have befallen mankind, and it has unquestionably been the source of all its achievements." - Leszek Kolakowski
"There are five people you meet in heaven. Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth. People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless. This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom