The Pilgrim Fathers hoped for an earthly paradise without the sin and selfishness of the Old World.

ECONOMIST: Heaven on earth

In 1877, when the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli drew the first detailed map of Mars, he imagined the planet as an earthly paradise.

NEWYORKER: The Martian Chroniclers

Unlike some of his peers elsewhere, he does not seem to see a new constitution as the road to earthly paradise, nor has he said he wants a second term before starting his first.

ECONOMIST: Paraguay

But the house was deep in the country, with no other house in sight, and the children had been in London for two years, without so much as once going to the seaside even for a day by an excursion train, and so the White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set down in an Earthly Paradise.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Five Children and It'

Yearning for abundance alternates with the idea that real paradise is swapping earthly pleasure for something better.

ECONOMIST: Heaven on earth