The romantics Quotes

“Back home, Huxley drew from this experience to compose a series of audacious attacks against the Romantic love of wilderness. The worship of nature, he wrote, is "a modern, artificial, and somewhat precarious invention of refined minds." Byron and Wordsworth could only rhapsodize about their love of nature because the English countryside had already been "enslaved to man." In the tropics, he observed, where forests dripped with venom and vines, Romantic poets were notably absent. Tropical peoples knew something Englishmen didn't. "Nature," Huxley wrote, "is always alien and inhuman, and occasionally diabolic." And he meant always: Even in the gentle woods of Westermain, the Romantics were naive in assuming that the environment was humane, that it would not callously snuff out their lives with a bolt of lightning or a sudden cold snap. After three days amid the Tuckamore, I was inclined to agree.”

“Back home, Huxley drew from this experience to compose a series of audacious attacks against the Romantic love of wilderness. The worship of nature, he wrote, is "a modern, artificial, and somewhat precarious invention of refined minds." Byron and Wordsworth could only rhapsodize about their love of nature because the English countryside had already been "enslaved to man." In the tropics, he observed, where forests dripped with venom and vines, Romantic poets were notably absent. Tropical peoples knew something Englishmen didn't. "Nature," Huxley wrote, "is always alien and inhuman, and occasionally diabolic." And he meant always: Even in the gentle woods of Westermain, the Romantics were naive in assuming that the environment was humane, that it would not callously snuff out their lives with a bolt of lightning or a sudden cold snap. After three days amid the Tuckamore, I was inclined to agree.”

“1. Romantic: One who ruthlessly believes in love in its finest form and impresses those feelings onto his or her various relationships. May result in scaring off partners, falling for the wrong person, and desperately trying to turn life into a movie with glamorous Old Hollywood actors. May also result in some of the best, most inspiring, and deepest relationships around.”

“The map was just an accessory. She knew exactly where she was.”

“There was something horribly depressing, she felt, about watching the weather report. That life could be planned like the perfect summer picnic drained it of spontaneity.”

“Technically, on the spectrum of very bad things, they did nothing truly wicked. But of course, that spectrum has no measure for the greatest of all carnal sins, the kind that occurs before skin touches skin, before wondering turns to yearning, yearning to having, having to holding for dear life, when two people cling to each other so desperately that even when they lie, inches apart, neither is fully satisfied until the light between them turns to darkness.”

“Nietzsche lampooned the romantics of his day (a half century later), noting that "they muddy the waters to make them look deep.”

“Time passed at an accelerated pace. They could be sitting in traffic or talking on the phone or waiting in line for a movie, and their time felt precious, important, worthwhile.”

“And she had been in love enough times to rule out the possibility that this was merely some feat of nostalgia.”

“It was understood that they shared the same thresholds--the same inexhaustible appetite for wasting time, for discussing lofty ideas, for dissecting trivial things, for driving to nowhere in particular, for listening to music, for talking about books, for obsessing over pop culture, but mostly for laughing, talking, and simply being together. There was nothing one could say that the other would find too cruel or too kind. And on those rare occasions when they did tire of each other, they needed only go a day without talking before they yearned to reconnect.”

“Occasionally, she wondered if all couples struggled so much to understand one another, spoke so little at dinner together, spent so much time camped out in front of the TV. Did all women sometimes feel distanced from their man while they were making love?”