Quotes & Sayings About Idyllic

Growing up is never idyllic, is it? Or it'd be called something else. — Laura Dave

Idyllic memories are merely a jeweled noose. — Orlando Ricardo Menes

I was always a happy and loving person. Many would say that I was living an idyllic life. — Susan Polis Schutz

Most people look at cats and think what a life - all we do is lie around in the sun, never having to lift a finger. But cats' lives aren't that idyllic. Cats are powerless, weak little creatures that injure easily. We don't have shells like turtles, nor wings like birds. We can't burrow into the ground like moles or change colors like a chameleon. The world has no idea how many cats are injured every day, how many of us meet a miserable end. I happen to be lucky enough to live with the Tanabes in a warm and friendly family, the children treat me well, and I've got everything I need. But even my life isn't always easy. When it comes to strays, though, they have a very tough time of it. — Haruki Murakami

There's an overemphasis on conservation and other idyllic energy sources that can be harmful in that it hampers new technology and innovation. — Klaus Lackner

It would be an idyllic tropical paradise if not for the malaria, the insects, the constant diarrhea and resulting hemorrhoids, and the fact that the people are dirty and smell bad and eat each other and use human heads for decoration. — Neal Stephenson

I sat helpless to prevent the closing of that chapter of idyllic love, dreading the return of the young man whose ineffable happiness was only to be the measure of his fall. I — Willa Cather

Idyllic follies never last, my little Chauvelin ... They come upon us like the measles ... and are as easily cured. — Emmuska Orczy

It's a sleepy, wonderful, idyllic town but there's a curse on it from 100 years ago, ... The people who died in this kind of boating accident have come back to take their revenge. — Selma Blair

The Forest of Arden, where I grew up, is where 'As You Like It' is set. It was idyllic. — Kate Fleetwood

I have this idyllic love life, but my mind just won't accept that. I would like to bring a new guy home every night. I try to make humor out of that situation. — Jen Kirkman

An idyllic period of my existence was when I had a den attached to my home ... a writing den, and no one had access to that unless they had their own special visa, applied for weeks in advance. — Wole Soyinka

Oh, Arkady, do me a favour, do let us for once have a really good quarrel - no holds barred, to the death." "But if we do, it'll end in..." "Blows?" Bazarov continued. "What if it does? Here, in the hay, in these idyllic surroundings, far from the world and the eyes of men - it doesn't matter. But you won't beat me. I'm going to take you now by the throat... — Ivan Turgenev

Gratitude is not something idyllic that comes when all good things line up to be counted. Gratitude is there all the time waiting to be focused on. — Antonia Montoya

It was a very idyllic childhood, surrounded by utterly beautiful landscapes that I got very, very bored of when I hit my teens. But being on your own a lot and being bored is good for your imagination. It makes it stretch. — Jessica Raine

I grew up just outside Hay-on-Wye, on the borders of Wales, on a farm. It was an amazing childhood, but I got a bit stir crazy when I hit my teens. There was the feeling of having to get out, you know, but it was definitely idyllic. — Jessica Raine

There is a brief moment when you first wake where you have no memories. An idyllic blank slate. A blissful emptiness. But it doesn't last long. You remember exactly who you are and all the terrible things you've gone through. — J.L. Weil

I am not going to apologize for the idyllic childhood and the wonderful siblings and the Christian home I grew up in. I know how blessed I am and I am thankful, but I also know it's not that way for everyone. I was talking to a young woman recently who was going through her something and she said, "I don't have sisters to watch my back like you do. I didn't have the kind of mother you did." And I said to her what I've begun saying to people across the country, "Then why not let the legacy of love and support start with you? — Robin Roberts

I love idyllic places and the kind of suspension of history they offer. But noble beauty is not enough. One must complicate the picture, because there's nowhere to "escape" to on the planet in pursuit of a hermetic pastoralism or a redemptive wilderness sublime. — Michael Light

There was almost a fairy quality to this place, he thought. The far look and the clear air and the feeling of detachment that touched almost on greatness of the spirit. As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it. — Clifford D. Simak

I had an idyllic childhood and when my parents bought me a Punch and Judy Show and a ventriloquist's dummy, I'd perform anywhere, anytime. My parents were wonderful when I told them I wanted to be an entertainer. — Ken Dodd

I lived in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s. It was, for a Westerner, pretty idyllic. There were the religious police; there were the rules; there were the prayer times. But it was as if we were existing in two separate universes. The Westerners were just allowed to get on with their way of life. — Robert Lacey

I cannot deny that on a breezy summer's day, Fishers Island is one of the most idyllic places possible for a round of golf. — Tom Doak

Those were comfortable, carefree years. The word I'd use now is idyllic. On Friday nights, we cheered on the Bulldogs of Midland High. On Sunday mornings, we went to church. Nobody locked their doors. Years later, when I would speak about the American Dream, it was Midland I had in mind. — George W. Bush

I think the concept of seeking fame and fortune in women's football in the States is a bit idyllic. Look at all the teams in America that have folded, and the leagues. — Hope Solo

I was one of the many kids in Northern Ireland who grew up in the countryside and had an idyllic childhood well away from the Troubles. — James Nesbitt

Another thing we wanted to do, a lot of shows or movies that are in the future or the post-apocalyptic are very bleached, desaturated desert environments and we wanted to do the opposite of that. There's always talk about Chernobyl and the world that environment has recovered has become this idyllic, bizarrely refuge for wildlife. — Miles Millar

Still, her plumpness was charming. Resting an ear on her hip was like lying in a meadow on an idyllic spring afternoon, her thighs as soft as freshly aired futon, the rolling flow of her curves leading gracefully to her pubis. When I complimented her on her qualities, though, all she said was, Oh yeah? — Haruki Murakami

But you can't show some far off idyllic conception of behavior if you want the kids to come and see the picture. You've got to show what it's really like, and try to reach them on their own grounds. — James Dean

Hawai'i is not truly the idyllic paradise of popular songs
islands of love and tranquility, where nothing bad ever happens. It was and is a place where people work and struggle, live and die, as they do the world over. — Alan Brennert

I grew up in Ditchling. It was an idyllic village at the foot of the South Downs. In those days, the village was full of artists and sculptors. — Donald Sinden

Where I live is about an hour and a half West of London. I live in the countryside ... It's a classic little village, and it's idyllic in a lot of ways. — William Moseley

You can tell the idyllic nature of a family by the upkeep of its picnic table. Ours is its own indictment. We are splintering and peeling. We rot. — Peter Hedges

Children - their untroubled, idyllic vision of the future is almost always shattered. Sooner or later they learn what all youth must - that life is the cruel fate that awaits them while they make plans for a tomorrow that will never be. — Andrew Levkoff

American family life has never been particularly idyllic. In the nineteenth century, nearly a quarter of all children experienced the death of one of their parents ... Not until the sixties did the chief cause of separation of parents shift from death to divorce. — Richard Louv

Where I live, in Vermont, there's this thing that women know about men, which is this disease: their childhood was so idyllic that nothing in the rest of their life can ever be satisfying. It's almost a plague. — Colin Trevorrow

Rural towns aren't always idyllic. It's easy to feel trapped and be aware of social hypocrisy. — Bill Pullman

Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic. — Margaret Atwood

An idyllic childhood is probably illusion. — Martha Grimes

Whether idyllic or defective, relationships are the fabric of life. — John Tracy Wilson

When we became teenagers boredom grew like a moth in a cocoon fighting to escape, and the peace created by our parents became a prison. We sought excitement and adventure. We sought anything but the sinless, pure, and average of the faux idyllic. — Scott Thompson

But there was no going back to that idyllic time when only one god wanted to kill me. — Kevin Hearne

Basically, in 'American Pie,' things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less ideal, less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right, but it is a morality song in a sense. — Don McLean

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

My preferences range from the gutter-like to the idyllically sublime, ideally with you roaming the range beside me... — Virginia Alison

For the person who wants to capture everything that passes before his eyes, [...] the only coherent way to act is to snap at least one picture a minute, from the instant he opens his yes in the morning to when he goes to sleep. This is the only way that he rolls of exposed film will represent a faithful diary of our days, with nothing left out. If I were to start taking pictures, I'd see this thing through, even if it meant losing my mind. But the rest of you still insist on making a choice. What sort of choice? A choice in the idyllic sense, apologetic, consolatory, at peace with nature, the fatherland, the family. Your choice isn't only photographic; it is a choice of life, which leads you to exclude dramatic conflicts, the knots of contradiction, the great tensions of will, passion, aversion. So you think you are saving yourselves from madness, but you are falling into mediocrity, into hebetude."

- from "The Adventure of a Photographer — Italo Calvino

Somehow the idyllic existence I envisioned never quite came to pass, but aside from the occasional culinary disaster, my marriage wasn't bad. — Alexandra Bogdanovic

As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic. — Karl Marx

The love between dog and man is idyllic, dogs were never expelled from paradise. — Milan Kundera

Many North Americans who migrate to Mexico spend much time and effort locating their idyllic hideaway but neglect to consider the difficulty of bringing their vehicle with them. Permanently importing a vehicle to Mexico can be a major headache since the government prefers immigrants to buy cars available for sale in country. Is it worth the hassle to import your vehicle? What's the procedure? How much does it cost? We'll give you the skinny and let you decide for yourself. — George Puckett

Here in Southern California we San Diegans have a saying. Hawaiians wouldn't appreciate it, but we say it nonetheless. We go outside, look around, and then say, "Just another day in paradise." The saying fits most every day of the year. In San Diego, near the ocean, it's never bitterly cold and it's never oppressively hot. I can appreciate the realities of the nonsublime weather in certain areas of the country. I spent a few years in Chicago for college, before heading back to San Diego. Then I returned to the Chicago area for two years of graduate school. I have figured that in the five years (sixty months) that I spent in the Midwest, forty months consisted of glacial winter. Another seventeen months were hot, airless summer. Perhaps three months over the entire five years were pleasant. Maybe even a day or two could have been described as idyllic. San Diego is different from that. Every five years we have about sixty months of heavenly weather. — Anonymous

(and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic too) — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The river, tonally, does not recede, presenting the same lifeless grey near and far, a depthless plane upon which Schmitt's dragging oars inscribe parallel lines and Eakins' oars, rising and falling, leave methodically spaced patches of disturbed water. The canvas is haunting - en evocation of the democracy's idyllic, isolating spaciousness, present even in the midst of a great Eastern city. — John Updike

I lived an idyllic 'Huckleberry Finn' life in a tiny town. Climbing trees. Tagging after brothers. Happy. Barefoot on my pony. It was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-esque. — Sissy Spacek

Standing before him, the blight of idyllic thought and aspiration--rotting souls reproducing like fleas. — Glen R. Krisch

At that time my notions of nuclear power were utterly idyllic. At school and at the university we'd been taught that this was a magical factory that made "energy out of nothing," where people in white robes sat and pushed buttons. Chernobyl blew up when we weren't prepared. — Svetlana Alexievich

The setting, concerns, and mood of The Woodlanders are consonant with the Wessex of the earlier novels. There is an element of nostalgia in Hardy's treatment of the woodlands of Little Hintock. Although such rural economies were very much alive in Hardy's day, he strikes an elegiac note in his evocation of a world that will inevitably pass away. However, the woodlands do not form the backdrop to an idyllic pastoral of humanity living in tranquil harmony with nature. The trees, which are such a dominant presence in the novel, compete with each other for nourishment and light, are vulnerable to disease and damage, and are frightening in their moaning under the lash of the storm. The woodlands represent the Darwinian struggle for existence that Hardy sees as extending not only to the inhabitants of this little world but also beyond ... — Geoffrey Harvey

The idyllic mayhem of two cultures colliding just doesn't seem as funny anymore. — Kris Kidd

Life. It's like a snow globe. From the outside it can look pretty, idyllic, calm. But in reality it's a sham. Look closely inside and you'll see everything is fake, plastic, very small and very, very meaningless. And then every now and again some bastard comes along and shakes the whole lot up. — Keith Nixon

My childhood is completely ... when I look back, it was '50s in New York, upper-middle class, it was completely idyllic and golden and wonderful - sweet in every way. — Peter Jurasik

This summer has been idyllic ... more than that, it's the unification of this group of formerly lost souls. It's been a syrupy lovefest for the past three months, and I wish it could last forever.
I think about that stupid fucking saying, Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I want to barf. I'm already beyond fond of everyone, so I'm all set. — Jessica Park

My parents moved to American Samoa when I was three or four years old. My dad was principal of a high school there. It was idyllic for a kid. I had a whole island for a backyard. I lived there until I was eight years old and we moved to Santa Barbara. — Eric Stoltz

t is rational to be weary of mass migration. Logically thinking, it signals an awareness that we do not produce a sufficient quantity of resources to feed, home and clothe our own, so how can we become an idyllic multicultural society, which provides equally for everyone? — Anita B. Sulser PhD

I'm in the countryside outside of Paris, in a beautiful old manor house. The studio is in the basement, but we decided to set everything up in the old parlor and dining-room area so we can look at each other and (at) the sunshine coming through the stained-glass windows. It's pretty idyllic, and I think it's spoiling me. I'll have to go back to regular life after this. — Feist

Only animals were not expelled from Paradise. — Milan Kundera

I have three children, each of whom is having an idyllic childhood, probably because I have been at the office the entire time. — Stacy Schiff

We had idyllic summer holidays, building sandcastles with my father on the beach at Bridlington. It might sound strange, but I think that secure cocoon of familial love was so nourishing, it gave me the strength to live life on my own. — Kiki Dee

choosing an idyllic ocean cruise over the whirlwind body cavity search that was air travel. — Dan Fiorella

We had common interests in the beauty of the French language. We both had a tremendous love of jazz. We shared dreams of getting married and having a family, living in the country, leading an idyllic life. — David Amram

George had sent him a handful of postcards over the last two months. The front of each of them had borne a photograph of the idyllic Scottish countryside. And on the back, a series of messages circling a single theme:
Bored.
So bored.
Kill me now.
Too late, already dead. — Cassandra Clare

That was how his pen finally designed his sculpture; in the center the weak,
confused, arrogant, soon to be destroyed young man holding cup a loft, behind him the idyllic child, clear-eyed, munching his grapes, symbol of joy
; between them the tiger skin. The Bacchus, hollow within himself, flabby, reeling, already old; the Satyr,
eternally young and gay, symbol of man's childhood and naughty innocence — Irving Stone

The stories my pupils told me were astonishing. One told how he had witnessed his cousin being shot in the back five times; another how his parents had died of AIDS. Another said that he'd probably been to more funerals than parties in his young life. For me - someone who had had an idyllic, happy childhood - this was staggering. — Erin Gruwell

What I remember most about those days is how happy we all were. When I think back on my life growing up on Terra d'Amore, tides of warm memories wash over me like the waves of the Mediterranean. Our little farm, nestled in the hills and valleys of Montecalvo just outside Bologna, was idyllic. Indeed, it was an Italian paradise...a veritable heaven. — Giacomino Nicolazzo

What's the difference between this school and a happy retirement community?" The room was silent again. "The difference is 'rithmetic! A retired person living by the ocean, just doing a little reading and writing till the end of their days - that's the dream, right? 'What do you do all day?' 'Some reading, a little writing.' Sounds idyllic, right? And yet school sucks. Everybody hates it. What's the difference? 'Rithmetic! It's time somebody put their finger on this fucking obvious thing. — B.J. Novak

The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit. The desert was the region in which the Chosen People had wandered for forty years, cared for by God alone. They could have reached the Promised Land in a few months if they had traveled directly to it. God's plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back on the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone. The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else. — Thomas Merton

Today is not yesterday. And tomorrow is nothing more than an idyllic day dream. — Rhonda Laurel

Reared in rural southern Alabama, we enjoyed an idyllic Huck Finn boyhood. But education there was casual at best. Our mother and father were high school teachers and challenged the pervasive easy-going ignorance. — Gregory Benford

It was a lovely landscape. It was idyllic, poetical, and it inspired me. I felt good and noble. I felt I didn't want to be sinful and wicked anymore. I would come and live here, and never do any more wrong, and lead a blameless, beautiful life, and have silver hair when I got old, and all that sort of thing. — Jerome K. Jerome

It looked nothing like America. It looked like an old painting, but real - everything achingly idyllic in the morning light - and I thought about how wonderfully strange it would be to live in a place where almost everything had been built by the dead. — John Green

By the 1850s enslavers had their eyes on expansion into Cuba in order to expand Southern political power. Here we see an idyllic image of a Cuba tobacco plantation, plus the idea of "Southern rights" being used to sell cigars. "Southerner rights segars. Expressly manufactured for Georgia & Alabama by Salomon Brothers. Fabrica de tabacos, de superior calidad de la vuelta-abajo," Broadside, 1859. — Edward E. Baptist

I wept for my family, all if us, my beautiful, idyllic, lost family. I wept for our excesses, our delusions and inconsistencies; not that we had cared too much or too little, although both were true, but that we had let such extraordinary care be subverted into extraordinary carelessness. We'd been careless with the best of our many resources: each other. It was as though we had taken for granted the fact that there would be more where we had come from too; another chance, another summer, another Brooke, Bridget or Bill. — Brooke Hayward

Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in. — Evelyn Waugh

We didn't have a lot of live theater in Oklahoma. I didn't visit New York when I was growing up. I watched movie musicals, and I believed in an idealistic, idyllic version of Broadway. — Kelli O'Hara

Things whose enormity nobody could have imagined in the idyllic harmlessness of the first decade of our country have happened and have turned our world upside down. Ever since, the world has remained in a state of schizophrenia. Not only has civilized Germany disgorged its terrible primitivity, but Russia is also ruled by it, and Africa has been set on fire. No wonder that the Western world feels uneasy.
Modern man does not understand how much his "rationalism" (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic "underworld." He has freed himself from "superstition" (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in world-wide disorientation and dissociation. — C. G. Jung

You don't have to go very far away from Scandinavia to realize what an idyllic society it is. — Susanne Bier

[He] didn't view the less idyllic chapters of his life as the results of "mistakes." He didn't believe in mistakes. He believed in a preordained path, and so far every point on this path had felt right. Every bad relationship had felt right, every shitty job he'd done had felt right - because he'd chosen them. — Lisa Jewell

I had a happy childhood in a nice suburban area, pretty idyllic, upper middle class and very, very white. My dad is an attorney. My mother is a housewife. They had five kids in seven years: me, my brother, and three sisters. I'm the oldest. We were all very active. My mother was exhausted. — Anthony Jeselnik

Each day, at the same time, Jude would return and they would be there, led by Webb, whose life could not have been more different than his. Where Webb's memories of childhood were idyllic and earthy, Jude's reeked of indifference. Webb read fantasy; Jude read realism. Webb believed a tree house was the perfect place for gaining a different perspective on the world; Jude saw it as perfect for surveillance and working out who or what was a threat to them. They argued about sport codes and song lyrics. Jude saw the rain-dirty valley; Webb saw Brigadoon. Yet, despite all this, they connected, and the nights they spent in the tree house discussing their brave new worlds and not so brave emotions made everything else in their lives insignificant. Somehow the world of Webb and Fitz and Tate and Narnie became the focus of Jude's life. — Melina Marchetta

We're living as if we were in mourning for a lost paradise, he thought. As if we longed for the car thieves and safecrackers of the old days, who doffed their caps and behaved like gentlemen when we came to take them in. But those days have irretrievably vanished, and it's questionable whether they were ever as idyllic as we remember them. — Henning Mankell

My images are unashamedly idyllic and romantic, a kind of enchanted Africa. They're my elegy to a world that is steadily, tragically vanishing. — Nick Brandt

For all its idyllic charm, and in the joy of companionship of Sita, Rama never lost sight of his main purpose in settling down in this region - he had come here to encounter and destroy the asuras, the fiends who infested this area, causing suffering and hardship to all the good souls who only wanted to be left alone to pursue their spiritual aims in peace. Rama's whole purpose of incarnation was ultimately to destroy Ravana, the chief of the asuras, abolish fear from the hearts of men and gods, and establish peace, gentleness, and justice in the world. — R.K. Narayan

Those Laurel Canyon days were great. I have a real fondness for that era, 'til about '68. Musically, it was wonderful, and there was this great innocence, an idyllic view of the world. After that, everything got a little ... edgy. — Chris Hillman

I think our love was all the better for being stretched out by our necessity to study hard to keep up with our work. To have all the time in the world to devote to love may be idyllic for a summer, but linked sweetness long drawn out is the greater luxury. [ ... ] During these summer absences, I longed for her, and wrote to her, and loved her more than ever, abstinence sharpening the appetite. — Robertson Davies

In idyllic small towns I sometimes see teenagers looking out of place in their garb of desperation, the leftover tatters and stains and slashes of the fashion of my youth. For this phase of their life, the underworld is their true home, and in the grit and underbelly of a city they could find something that approximates it. Even the internal clock of adolescents changes, making them nocturnal creatures for at least a few years. All through childhood you grow toward life and then in adolescence, at the height of life, you begin to grow toward death. This fatality is felt as an enlargement to be welcomed and embraced, for the young in this culture enter adulthood as a prison, and death reassures them that there are exits. "I have been half in love with easeful death," said Keats who died at twenty-six and so were we, though the death we were in love with was only an idea then. — Rebecca Solnit

Pure poetry in motion. A swift-moving, heartfelt tale of love and loss, two stories intersecting-an d connecting-by magic. Michelle Baker is a born poet, and a born writer. The Canoe is just the start of what I hope to be a long idyllic journey through the love and soul of the human heart. — Trent Zelazny

A generation before, it had been sagebrush and coyotes; a generation later, it was a burgeoning movie town. But for that brief idyllic time in 1910, Hollywood looked like the perfect place for a successful writer to settle down, build his dream house, and maybe do some gardening. — Kage Baker

I was never going to get any sleep. I was going to have Alice in Wonderland conversation after Alice in Wonderland conversation until I died of exhaustion. Here, in the restful, idyllic Victorian era. — Connie Willis

Aamir, recalling back to the idyllic days of his college youth, pictured himself once again sitting quietly on a familiar neighbourhood rooftop. He often enjoyed relaxing there, alone or with friends, while watching the colourful fluttering prayer flags on rooftop poles, especially in the warmth of an early evening breeze, as wispy clouds drifted against the jagged Himalayan backdrop. He has oft times wondered, ever since his childhood, if the prayers to the spirits of the dead, flying out from those slowly tattering rags, will ever really be answered. Perhaps it will be in another place, in another time, when we're living another life that we shall finally know. Aamir had calmly thought at the time. He was that sort of philosophical guy. — Andrew James Pritchard

If they succeed, you will not be packed off to some idyllic farm, where you can write bad poetry, we will both be executed. — A.H. Septimius

It was such an idyllic time when I grew up in Hong Kong. It was a British colony and very much geared towards buying the best of Britain. My childhood does have a huge influence on how we design. There must be a little bit of that nostalgia - childhood is so special. — Marie-Chantal Claire