Best Picturesque Quotes & Sayings

I love the idea of creating a sort of nuanced portrait of kids that they're not all perfect. They're kind of misfits but not in a picturesque, hip way, they're really, really kids that are not entirely great. — Guillermo Del Toro

We may be in the most picturesque part of my family's estate, but you are more beautiful than these roses, and certainly far dearer. I do not, I could not, wish to be parted from you again, as we have been these past months. I love you entirely too much to withstand such a separation again. Please, my friend, my darling, help me prevent such a horrible happening, marry me. — Jessica Schlenker

In all these sights I achieve solace only in bringing forth trees, picturing them blooming like smoke from the roofs of gutted buildings, dreaming of what a fine and picturesque pile of rubble this city will someday make. — Tod Wodicka

Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through the wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold over which one must step who would enter into the mystery and adventure of the great white North. — James Oliver Curwood

The day was hot, the sun high, and the silence was so think you'd have thought the sky didn't have any air in it. — Alice Blanchard

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles. — Henry David Thoreau

And at this very moment, like a miracle, the rail-bus appeared. We waved our arms frantically, hardly daring to hope that it would stop. It did stop. We scrambled thankfully on board.
That is the irony of travel. You spend your boyhood dreaming of a magic, impossibly distant day when you will cross the Equator, when your eyes will behold Quito. And then, in the slow prosaic process of life, that day undramatically dawns - and finds you sleepy, hungry and dull. The Equator is just another valley; you aren't sure which and you don't much care. Quito is just another railroad station, with fuss about baggage and taxis and tips. And the only comforting reality, amidst all this picturesque noisy strangeness, is to find a clean pension run by Czech refugees and sit down in a cozy Central European parlor to a lunch of well-cooked Wiener Schnitzel. — Christopher Isherwood

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. — Charles Dickens

Being a painter myself ... whenever I could dispense with architectural precision, I indulged in the picturesque, in which case I sacrificed a few details when necessary in favor of an imposing effect that would give a monument its real character and also preserve the poetic charm that surrounds it. — Charles Negre

In another country where the buildings don't stop rising until they pinthe clouds to the sky. — Sally Gardner

Sugar had grown up in Charleston, South Carolina: possibly the most luscious of the world's garden cities. Behind every wrought-iron gate or exposed-brick wall in the picturesque peninsula blooming between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers lay a sweet-scented treasure trove of camellias, roses, gardenias, magnolias, tea olives, azaleas and jasmine, everywhere, jasmine.
With its lush greenery, opulent vines, sumptuous hedgerows and candy-colored window boxes, it was no wonder the city's native sons and daughters believed it to be the most beautiful place on earth.
In her first years of exile Sugar had tried to cultivate a reminder of the luxuriant garden delights she had left behind, struggling in sometimes hostile elements to train reluctant honeysuckle and sulky sweet potato vines or nurture creeping jenny and autumn stonecrop. — Sarah-Kate Lynch

Baby Kochamma had installed a dish antenna on the roof of the Ayemenem house. She presided over the world in her drawing room on satellite TV. The impossible excitement that this engendered in Baby Kochamma wasn't hard to understand. It wasn't something that happened gradually. It happened overnight. Blondes, wars, famines, football, sex, music, coups d'etat - they all arrived on the same train. They unpacked together. They stayed at the same hotel. And in Ayemenem, where once the loudest sound had been a musical bus horn, now whole wars, famines, picturesque massacres and Bill Clinton could be summoned up like servants. — Arundhati Roy

His picturesque and filthy loquacity flowed like a troubled stream from a poisoned source. — Joseph Conrad

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On — Bram Stoker

You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill - he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too, is deceitful posturing ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit ... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is. — Henry David Thoreau

I knew a young lady of the last "romantic" generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favourite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

Poverty, to be picturesque, should be rural. Suburban misery is as hideous as it is pitiable. — Anthony Trollope

Even then, if the cliff, chosen and cherished from long ago, had not been so picturesque, if it had been merely a flat, prosaic bank, the suicide might not have taken place at all. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yet the greening grasses and overarching elms and oaks, just beginning to come into leaf, gave the scene a picturesque air, like a fairy-tale dwelling; — Joyce Carol Oates

The name Mary Jo Quinn was written neatly in faded blue marker on the front of the scrapbook, its gray edges frayed with age and wear, as though it had been handled often. Such a memento was a strange thing to find in a used bookstore, especially when one considered its contents. I'd discovered the handmade tome buried on the bottom shelf on the back wall of a little musty-smelling shop in the tiny resort town of Copper Harbor. This picturesque community is the gateway to Isle Royale National Park, an island in the western quarter of Lake Superior that beckoned to hikers, kayakers and canoers. Copper Harbor is the northern-most bastion of civilization in Michigan on a crooked finger of land called the Keweenaw Peninsula. Its remote, pristine shoreline provided an excellent respite from a hellacious year for my best friend from high school and me on a late September weekend. — Nancy Barr

God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint. — Sylvia Plath

Is it necessary to add that the echoes of many characteristic tales, dating from that picturesque time, still linger about here, in more or less fragmentary form to be caught by the attentive ear? Some of them I have repeated; most of them I have forgotten; one I have never repeated, and assuredly can never forget. — Thomas Hardy

Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so distinctive a character. He was beginning to acquit himself none too badly in the use of the sentimental and picturesque language which is called wit in certain drawing-rooms. — Stendhal

The landlord of colonial days may not have been the greatest man in town, but he was certainly the best-known, often the most popular, and ever the most picturesque and cheerful figure. — Alice Morse Earle

A square, flat-roofed hovel, neatly frescoed, with its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and turreted with dried camel-refuse, gives to a landscape a feature that is exceedingly festive and picturesque, especially if one is careful to remember to stick in a cat wherever, about the premises, there is room for a cat to sit. — Mark Twain

The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene. — Mary Shelley

no more than ten feet later I was faced with a picturesque clearing at the edge of a wide, still stream and I sucked in a small breath. I didn't know this place existed. If I'd known this place existed then I would have become one of those nature people who forage the woods for sustenance and bathe in moonlit pools. — Penny Reid

Something quite special has played out in the picturesque valleys and mountains, towns and villages of France over the past three weeks. For all who appreciate sport, it was a privilege and an inspiration to watch. — Paul Ramadge

We can't fully appreciate a picturesque sunset if we're wishing it would never rain again. We can't fully enjoy a moment of true connection if we're wishing we'd never feel alone again. We can't fully savor a relaxing day if we're wishing we'd never be busy again. The key to happiness is to focus less on making moments last and more on making the moments count. — Lori Deschene

Helena had been standing by her window looking out to sea, breathing in the fresh air and admiring the picturesque scene of a small ship sailing into the harbor.
She had not been able to think of anything other than Mikolas for days.
From LONGING the 3rd chapter of TRUE LOVE — Destin Bays

Like most Americans I am no lover of cops, and the consistent investigation of city forces for bribery, brutality, and a long and picturesque list of malfeasances is not designed to reassure me. However, my hostility does not extend to the state troopers now maintained in most parts of the country. By the simple expedient of recruiting intelligent and educated men, paying them adequately, and setting them beyond political coercion, many states have succeeded in creating elite corps of men, secure in their dignity and proud of their service. Eventually our cities may find it necessary to reorganize their police on the pattern of the state police. But this will never happen while political organizations retain the slightest power to reward or to punish. — John Steinbeck

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

She was known for her volcanic passion for Romantic music that erupted regularly during her lessons, then cooled and settled in between. — Tori De Clare

A charm of Goldfinches swooped in and settled on a stand of thistles, pecking at the down. It was a scene Jejeune had seen a thousand times on calendar pages, one of the most picturesque in nature. It still gave him a frisson of delight and he paused for a moment before speaking. p. 147 — Steve Burrows

The poverty of the villages is almost picturesque from the windows of a coach that is not stopping. — Andrew Miller