#picturesque

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

#picturesque-description #sorrow #life

Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words. ↗

— Anatole Broyard

#inalienable #logical #picturesque #poetry #sentences

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

— Walt Whitman

#bad #bad manners #called #humanity #manners

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

— Nancy Astor

#lonely #may #often #ones #picturesque

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#gestures #listen #mankind #picturesque #rather

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

#bravery #certain #certain point #chivalry #frame

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 #exchange #house #i #inside

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

#appearance #certainly #contains #ever #i

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

#destruction #picturesque #prague #rubble #solace

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

— Anthony Trollope

#misery #picturesque #pitiable #poverty #rural