Picturesque Quotes - Page 3

• Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

  Donna Tartt

  Running, Dark, Thinking

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.7, Vintage

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• To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

  Walt Whitman

  Real, Artist, Humanity

  Walt Whitman, Floyd Stovall (2007). “Prose Works 1892, Volume II: Collect and Other Prose”, p.516, NYU Press

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• Poverty, to be picturesque, should be rural. Suburban misery is as hideous as it is pitiable.

  Anthony Trollope

  Literature, Poverty, Misery

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “The Macdermots of Ballycloran: Trollope's Works”, p.81, 谷月社

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• The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Oracles, Literature, Calm

  Henry David Thoreau (1862). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. By Henry D. Thoreau”, p.133

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• Wherever modern Science has exploded a superstitious fable or even a picturesque error, she has replaced it with a grander and even more poetical truth.

  George Perkins Marsh

  Truth, Science, Errors

  George Perkins Marsh, Stephen C. Trombulak (2001). “So Great a Vision: The Conservation Writings of George Perkins Marsh”, p.80, UPNE

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• No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Country, Writing, Simple

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1983). “Novels”, p.854, Library of America

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• The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice.

  James Weldon Johnson

  Romantic, Views, People

  James Weldon Johnson, Sondra K. Wilson (1995). “The Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson: Social, political, and literary essays”, p.352, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Ye lover of the picturesque, if ye wish to drown your grief, take my advice and visit the ancient town of Crieff.

  William Topaz McGonagall

  Grief, Scotland, Advice

  William Topaz McGonagall, “Beautiful Crief”

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• Even in its darkness, it has this picturesque element. It's something about the human condition. It's not the water itself-it's humanity's relationship to water, because that’s almost a human need, that water be a positive force.

  Roni Horn

  Water, Darkness, Humanity

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• I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.

  Walker Percy

  Uncles, Writing, Wind

  Walker Percy, Lewis A. Lawson, Victor A. Kramer (1993). “More Conversations with Walker Percy”, p.223, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Literature, like a gypsy, to be picturesque, should be a little ragged.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Literature, Littles, Gypsy

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• How very seldom do you encounter in the world a man of great abilities, acquirements, experience, who will unmask his mind, unbutton his brains, and pour forth in careless and picturesque phrase all the results of his studies and observation; his knowledge of men, books, and nature. On the contrary, if a man has by any chance an original idea, he hoards it as if it were old gold; and rather avoids the subject with which he is most conversant, from fear that you may appropriate his best thoughts.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Book, Men, Ideas

  "Coningsby". Book by Benjamin Disraeli, Book VII, Ch. 2, 1844.

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• Arles is certainly one of the most interesting towns I have ever seen, whether viewed as a place remarkable for the objects of antiquity it contains, or for the primitive manners of its inhabitants and its picturesque appearance.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Interesting, Towns, Appearance

  Marguerite GARDINER (Countess of Blessington.) (1841). “The Idler in France”, p.19

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• I have a respect for family pride. If it be a prejudice, it is a prejudice in its most picturesque shape. But I hold it is connected with some of the noblest feelings in our nature.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Family, Pride, Feelings

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1837). “Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides”, p.96

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• Picturesque meant - he decided after careful observation of the scenerey that inspired Twoflower to use the word - that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, mean 'idiot'.

  Terry Pratchett

  Mean, Tourists, Use

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “The Colour Of Magic: (Discworld Novel 1)”, p.101, Random House

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• Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.

  George Eliot

  Beautiful, Art, Distance

  George Eliot (1901). “Works of George Eliot ...: Daniel Deronda”

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• Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance!

  George Eliot

  Beautiful, Distance, Perspective

  George Eliot (1996). “Daniel Deronda”, p.127, Wordsworth Editions

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• Pioneers may be picturesque figures, but they are often rather lonely ones.

  Nancy Astor

  Lonely, Pioneers, May

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• I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine.

  Primo Levi

  Beautiful, Home, House

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