Idyll Quotes & Sayings

I don't like to write. But I love having written. — Michael Kanin

One of the characteristics of kitsch is precisely the neutralization of 'extreme situations', particularly death, by turning them into some sentimental idyll. — Saul Friedlander

The end of the idyll was implicit in the beginning: I at least knew that, though you might not. And also that the more enchanted the idyll the greater must be the pain of its ending. That won't endure. Hearts don't really break, you know. — Georgette Heyer

I grew up 60 minutes way from Richmond, in Charlottesville, Virginia and, as a child, I was obsessed with the Civil War. I used to do re-enactments and all that stuff. — Billy Campbell

All human beings have always aspired to an idyll, to that garden where nightingales sing, to that realm of harmony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man and man against other men, but rather where the world and all men are shaped from one and the same matter. There, everyone is a note in a sublime Bach fugue, and anyone who refuses to be one is a mere useless and meaningless black dot that need only be caught and crushed between thumb and finger like a flea. — Milan Kundera

In his bestseller, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr argues that in the Internet age we are losing our capacity for deep thinking, reading, and conversation. — Michael S. Horton

Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may find his flock unruly, definant. I cannot afford to be lenient. — Joanne Harris

As a child, I wanted to marry a farmer, but no doubt the reality would have been very different to the idyll in my head. — Jane Asher

Never send a man where you can send a bullet. — Ian Fleming

You need help when you're starting out. On the other hand, some people are very naturalistic to begin with. — David Naughton

The more enchanted the idyll, greater must be the pain of its ending. — Georgette Heyer

What tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surrounded the idyll of Raoul and his sweet and charming Christine! ... What had become of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again? ... — Gaston Leroux

Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the Cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman [the cross] is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then ... a play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll. — Heinrich Heine

I love the perspective afforded by having lived five decades, a degree of bemused and muted calm, a relief from the insistent demands of a turbulent ego and rampant ambition. I'd love to stay here forever. But something tells me that 50 is a sunny idyll, a temporary state of grace, a golden afternoon. — Kate Christensen

As the political sky darkened, the court was lost in a last idyll of pleasure gardens, courtesans and mushairas, or poetic symposia, Sufi devotions and visits to pirs, as literary and religious ambition replaced the political variety. — William Dalrymple

An old villa surrounded by a garden looked to them like the image of a comforting home, the dream of an idyll long past. — Milan Kundera

MARGARET HAD SEEN ASH cheerfully powerful, as talkative as a jaybird. She'd seen him silently powerful while he was listening to those around her. She didn't like seeing him vulnerable. It made her feel odd inside - hotly angry on his behalf, and enraged that someone had made him feel that way. — Courtney Milan

What I realized on the 'Grasshopper' was that I wasn't sure that I liked being in every shot. It wasn't fun. — Jacqueline Bisset

Once there was a seamstress who could weave fabric from feeling. She sewed gowns of delight: sheer, sparkling, sleek. She cut cloth out of ambition and ardor, idyll and industry. — Marie Rutkoski

No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development. — Milan Kundera

So burrow in. Snuggle deep. A winter idyll of simple splendor awaits. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

It is, let me say, at the very least by no means self-evident that there is more liberty, equality, and fraternity in the world today than there was one thousand years ago. One might arguably suggest that the opposite is true. I seek to paint no idyll of the worlds before historical capitalism. They were worlds of little liberty, little equality, and little fraternity. The only question is whether historical capitalism represented progress in these regards, or regression. — Immanuel Wallerstein

One of the reasons I hate Hollywood so much is that they portray the travails of teen life as so innocuous and fun loving, some kind of idyll before the mean business of adulthood. People forget how much it all hurts back then. Someone pinches you and you feel it in your bones. They don't want to face what a bunch of fragile sadists teenagers were. All these folks who acted all shocked and outraged when those kids in Columbine went off - where the hell did they go to high school? — Steve Almond

Hollywood is my domestic idyll. — Rufus Sewell

The idyll ended, as idylls must. — Philip Zaleski

Sunny wintry days. The idyll of (inner) loneliness. What am I going to do with my life? — Joyce Carol Oates

There's a whole range of words that people use about landscape. Pastoral? Idyll? I can't stand them. — Alice Oswald

Any captain can only do his best for the team and for cricket. When you are winning, you are a hero. Lose, and the backslappers fade away. — Richie Benaud

But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it is madness. Alone I confront them and tell them that nothing could be saner or truer! What do people really know about life? We fall in line, follow the pattern established by our mentors. Everything is based on assumptions; even time, space, motion, matter are nothing but supposition. The world has no new knowledge to impart; it merely accepts what is there. — Knut Hamsun