Quotes & Sayings About Tahiti

Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti. — Jacques Barzun

Sometimes I forget some of the things I've done. I recently recalled that after Watergate I went away by myself to Tahiti for a month, moving from island to island. That was a point in my life where I didn't know what was next. — Diane Sawyer

French Polynesia embraces a vast ocean area strewn with faraway outer islands, each with a mystique of its own. The 118 islands and atolls are scattered over an expanse of water 18 times the size of California, though in dry land terms the territory is only slightly bigger than Rhode Island. The distance from one end of the island groups to another is four times further than from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Every oceanic island type is represented in these sprawling archipelagoes positioned midway between California and New Zealand. The coral atolls of the Tuamotus are so low they're threatened by rising sea levels, while volcanic Tahiti soars to 2,241 meters. Bora Bora and Maupiti, also high volcanic islands, rise from the lagoons of what would otherwise be atolls.
— David Stanley

Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors
somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating
none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries. — James A. Michener

I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim ... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti. — Ezra Pound

Henry sailed from England in July of 1776. The stated objectives of Cook's third expedition were twofold. The first was to sail to Tahiti, to return Sir Joseph Banks's pet - the man named Omai - to his homeland. Omai had grown tired of court life and now longed to return home. He had become sulky and fat and difficult, and Banks had grown tired of his pet. The second task was to then sail north, all the way up the Pacific coast of the Americas, in search of a Northwest Passage. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Had the Holocaust happened in Tahiti or the Congo, as it has; had it happened in South America, as it has; had it happened in the West Indies, as it has - you must remember that within fifty years of Columbus's arrival, only the bones remained of the people called the Arawaks, with one or two of them in Spain as specimens. Had the Holocaust committed under the Nazis happened somewhere else, we wouldn't be talking about it the way we talk about it. — Jamaica Kincaid

I fall asleep thinking there is no better elixir than travel. Old things always bored me, boredom always scared me, while travel - travel is a carnival of wild affairs. — Carol Vorvain

Real Dreams don't require you to abandon your family, quit your job, and move to Tahiti with your paintbrush. They just require that you search your soul for that deep dream you put aside-and go for it. And watch your life light up. — Barbara Sher

I grew up in neighbouring Hawaii, where Tahiti is regarded as a brother. — Marie Helvin

That's what I like about Polynesians. They wear their hearts on their sleeve knowing that, for adults, there are better games to play than hiding their emotions from each other — Carol Vorvain

May's haircuts were Marblehead's version of a magic show. The townie kids used to form lines up and down Front Street to watch as Mr. Dooling pulled the rattail comb through my mother's hair. With each pull, the comb would snag on something, then stop. As he reached into the mass to unwind the tangle, he would find and remove everything from sea glass to shells to smooth stones. In one particularly matted tangle, he found a sea horse. Once he even found a postcard sent from Tahiti to someone in Beverly Farms. — Brunonia Barry

Spend the glittering moonlight there
Pursuing down the soundless deep
Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair,
Or floating lazy, half-asleep.
Dive and double and follow after,
Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,
With lips that fade, and human laughter
And faces individual,
Well this side of Paradise! ...
There's little comfort in the wise. — Rupert Brooke

You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand." He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy's cold cheeks. "Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel? — Stephen King

Yes, I found happiness. And no, it didn't take years of struggles, hours of meditation or tons of self-help books and yoga lessons. It just happened. Here, it follows me wherever I go. During the day, it joins me, like a willing ally, through the usual cycle of grasping and craving, and, at night, it lets me fall asleep, my mind quiet, no rambling thoughts filling it. — Carol Vorvain

My sister Naomi and I always wanted to go to Tahiti. We planned a fantastic holiday to visit several islands, but at the last moment, Naomi cancelled. It was the first time I'd holidayed alone, and it was absolutely the best. — Marie Helvin

Tahiti has been spoiled for many years, but Bali is one of the few cultures with origins in one of the great ancient cultures which is still alive. — Arthur Erickson

Couldn't you see me and you stretched out in a bikini on the beach in Tahiti?
See, me, I'm very selective even though I could be greedy;
My main objective is to write our names together in graffiti. — Pharoahe Monch

The great radio telescopes of the world are constructed in remote locations for the same reason Paul Gauguin sailed to Tahiti: For them to work well they must be far from civilization. — Carl Sagan

The narrow coastal road has many twists and turns, each one revealing scenery of incredible beauty. On one side, the mountains rise proud and steep challenging the sky, on the other, the tropical lagoon sparkles like a zillion twinkling stars. I dream of being carried away on the round, soft shoulders of gorgeous mermaids into the deep blue ocean waters. — Carol Vorvain

I marketed pens - on the phone. But the beauty of the gig was that you had to call these strangers and say, 'Hi, how ya doing?' You made up a name, like, 'Hey, it's Edward Quartermaine from California. You're eligible to receive this grandfather clock or a trip to Tahiti.' You promise them all these things if they buy a gross of pens. — Johnny Depp

She had dearly missed the northern world during her time in the South Seas. She had missed the change of seasons, and the hard, bright, bracing sunlight of winter. She had missed the rigors of a cold climate, and the rigors of the mind, as well. She was simply not made for the tropics
neither in complexion or disposition. There were those who loved Tahiti because it felt to them like Eden
like the beginning of history; she wished to live within humanity's most recent moment, at the cusp of invention and progress. She did not wish to inhabit a land of spirits and ghosts; she desired a world of telegraphs, trains, improvements, theories, and science, where things changed by the day. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn't either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. The green vales of Tahiti, the hills of Guadalcanal, the towering peaks about Wau, and the noonday brilliance of Rabaul have enchanted many white travelers who have stayed on for many years and built happy lives. Often on a cool night when the beer was plentiful and the stories alluring, we have envied the men and women of the South Pacific — James A. Michener

We are a free people; and now you have planted in our country the title deeds of our future slavery. You are neither god nor demon; who are you, then, to make slaves? Orou! You understand the language of these men, tell us all, as you have told me, what they have written on this sheet of metal: This country is ours. This country yours? And why? Because you have walked thereon? If a Tahitian landed one day on your shores, and scratched on one of your rocks or on the bark of your trees: This country belongs to the people of Tahiti - what would you think? — Denis Diderot

I wasn't creative enough to imagine my first novel becoming a film directed by Alexander Payne. Nor did I consider the possibility of seeing Hollywood stars moving through my personal version of Hanalei town: going to Tahiti Nui, rehearsing a scene in front of my cousin's cottages, driving the snaky roads. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. — Herman Melville

I don't want to go through it all again. All that time without you, always waiting, my foolish optimism that someday it would be different-"
"Your optimism was justified! Look at me. Look at us! This is different. I know it is, Daniel. I saw us in Helston and Tibet and Tahiti. We were in love, sure, but it was nothing like what we have now."
They'd dropped back farther, out of earshot of the others. They were just Luce and Daniel, two lovers talking in the sky. "I'm still here," she said. "I'm here because you believed in us. You believed in me."
"I did-I do believe in you."
"I believe in you, too." She heard a smile enter her voice. "I always have."
They were not going to fail. — Lauren Kate

A grown person in Tahiti has an eating hour allotted to him twice a day, at 10 A.M. and 5 P.M. — Charles Warren Stoddard

Taking care of you" doesn't mean to award yourself with a new pair of shoes or spending beyond measure on a trip to Tahiti. It actually means to take care of your financial future. — Kim Kiyosaki

I think maybe ten years from now, I'm hopefully going to be, in like, Tahiti or something. Kicking back like in my huge mansion, if everything goes right, it's all up to me. — Corey Haim

The English too, were turning their eyes to the South. In 1769, there was to be a transit of the planet Venus across the disc of the sun, a rare event which astronomers wanted to observe. The newly discovered island of Tahiti was judged the perfect site. The Royal Society in London asked the Royal Navy to organize the expedition. The Navy obliged. This was to have profound and unlooked-for consequences. It led to the virtual monopolization by naval officers of British Polar exploration until the first decade of this century. The voyage inspired by the transit of Venus was commanded by a man of quiet genius, James Cook, one of the greatest of discoverers. — Roland Huntford

Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel? ... Sometimes he makes us live. — Stephen King

They were all women's magazines, but they weren't like the magazines my mother and sister read. The articles in my mother's and sister's magazines were always about sex and personal gratification. They had titles like "Eat Your Way to Multiple Orgasms," "Office Sex - How to Get It," "Tahiti: The Hot New Place for Sex," and "Those Shrinking Rain Forests - Are They Any Good for Sex?" The British magazines addressed more modest aspirations. They had titles like "Knit Your Own Twin Set," "Money-Saving Button Offer," "Make This Super Knitted Soap-Saver," and "Summer's Here - It's Time for Mayonnaise! — Bill Bryson

For the first time I understood why people come back from Alaska with fifty pictures of glaciers or return from a honeymoon in Tahiti with fifty pictures of the same sunset. The world is so beautiful in these places, it is impossible to register that there will be more, more, more. Surely this is it. Negotiate with your ailing camera battery. How can it not stay alive for this? How can you believe that twenty minutes from now there will be an even taller forest, an even wider waterfall? We are only as good as our most extreme experiences. — Sloane Crosley

The love between Uncle Dees and Roger was every bit as enduring as it had been immediate. They were never to be seen apart, man and dog, not since the moment of their introduction. Very quickly after their arrival in Amsterdam four years earlier, Roger had given Alma to understand that he was no longer her dog
that, in fact, he had never been her dog, nor had he ever been Ambrose's dog, but that he had been Dees' dog all along, by force of pure and plain destiny. The fact that Roger was born in distant Tahiti, whereas Dees van Devender resided in Holland, had been the result, Roger appeared to believe, of an unfortunate clerical error, now thankfully rectified. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Tahitians don't chase happiness. Happiness comes naturally to them. You only need to see them in the water, with a beer in their hand, splashing each other or waving to every stranger they see on the road, to know this. Happiness is in the air: in every hibiscus flower that opens early in the morning, in the sweet aroma of the pineapple plantations, in the smile of the people lolling around idly, resting slothfully in the warm breeze that ruffles the surface of the lagoon. — Carol Vorvain

I met some people who help in an archeological project in the South Pacific, between sailing to the Marquesas, which is an island group not too far from Tahiti, and I think, Wouldn't that be great? I have such a fascination with history and especially history in my own country. — Robert Plant

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return! — Herman Melville

Spending time on 18th-century ships in Tahiti when I was 17 was quite unusual. — Dexter Fletcher

If I solve this one, said Harry's brain, I want a cookie afterward, and if you make the problem any more difficult than this, I mean the slightest bit more difficult, I am climbing out of your skull and heading for Tahiti. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Smile at a friend, at a stranger, at an enemy, at life's absurdities and the universe will smile back at you. — Carol Vorvain

Once, just once, I wish one of my assignments took me took me to somewhere like Tahiti or Hawaii. — Heather Lyons

I loved Le Taha'a private resort in Tahiti. It's accessible only by private boat or helicopter, and it sits on a tiny strip of land just big enough for one hotel. It's extraordinary and faces the Vanilla Island where Tahitians grow vanilla. — Marie Helvin