Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.

I'd like to think life has improved since 1850, despite the long hours we all seem to spend slaving over hot computers, but the psychological journeys remain the same - the search for love, identity, a meaningful place in the world.

I had a very simple life growing up in the farm country outside of Perugia, and biscotti and warm milk with a tiny bit of coffee were a big part of my morning ritual before walking to school.

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

There is a romantic, often misguided, misconception among the British that life in France is akin to life in Paradise.

In Italy, they add work and life on to food and wine.

You know, rural Americans are a special people. Their labor puts food on our table and fuel in our gas tanks. Their service in our military sets a powerful example of leadership, honor and sacrifice. Their spirit of community inspires us all.

Everyone can identify with a fragrant garden, with beauty of sunset, with the quiet of nature, with a warm and cozy cottage.

What she did was to open our eyes to details of country life such as teaching us names of wild flowers and getting us to draw and paint and learn poetry.

Location work has its charms, and can seem glamorous on the outside, but I think living at home and having the stability of a home life once you've finished work is very underrated!

No one can feel more gratefully the charm of noble scenery, or the refreshment of escape into the unspoiled solitudes of nature, than the laborer at some close in-door employment.

I love nature like nothing else. Before I moved to Switzerland, my home was a flat in London with a garden. In those snatched moments away from dance, I did typical weekend things like pruning, planting, and weeding. I planted fruit trees and even had a vegetable garden, but I wasn't around enough, so it was a disaster.

Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path.

I learned a lot of lessons growing up on my family's farm on the Eastern Shore: the dignity of hard work, the importance of planning ahead, and the joy you get from serving others. Not to mention how to collect eggs, shear a sheep, and bail hay by hand.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world.

Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France - that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven?

In sharp contrast to the idea that this stage of life is enviable, we hear high levels of anxiety about getting old, anxieties about health, mobility, access to facilities, simple routine care and attention.

Why do people so love to wander? I think the civilized parts of the World will suffice for me in the future.

Geographically, Ireland is a medium-sized rural island that is slowly but steadily being consumed by sheep.

To me, country music tells a story about, and deals with, the way people live their lives and what they do.

Geographically, Ireland is a medium-sized rural island that is slowly but steadily being consumed by sheep.

Live the life you've dreamed.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

The cottage garden; most for use designed, Yet not of beauty destitute.

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.

I grew up in southeastern Oklahoma on a working cattle ranch, and it was always very romantic to me: The West, the cowboy, the Western way of life.

Only in the English countryside could violent death remain something that is 'cosy.'

Whether rich or poor, a home is not a home unless the roots of love are ever striking deeper through the crust of the earthly and the conventional, into the very realities of being, not consciously always; seldom, perhaps; the simplicity of loving grows by living simply near nature and God.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

For two centuries the English countryside has been an icon of national identity and the loved reminder of our island home. Yet the government is bent on littering the hills with wind turbines and the valleys with high speed railways.

Being alone on the moors is scary; as the rain clouds settle in, it makes you realise your place in nature.

The landscape painter must walk in the fields with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see Nature in all her beauty.

Culture survives in smaller spaces - not in the history books that erect monuments to the nation's grand history but in cafes and cinema houses, village squares, and half-forgotten libraries.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.

I was brought up in a very open, rural countryside in the middle of nowhere. There were no cell phones. If your lights went out, you were lit by candlelight for a good four days before they can get to you. And so, my imagination was crazy.

I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world, and machines - TV, telephone, cars - were still more or less ancillary, and computers were unheard of in everyday life.

I grew up in a small, strictly-Catholic fishing village on the coast of Wales. The people there have a different attitude to life than those in Hollywood - people stick together more.

The Amish communities of Pennsylvania, despite the retro image of horse-drawn buggies and straw hats, have long been engaged in a productive debate about the consequences of technology.

One of India's major blessings is the rich store of experience and knowledge available in the rural and tribal areas.

I had daydreams and fantasies when I was growing up. I always wanted to live in a log cabin at the foot of a mountain. I would ride my horse to town and pick up provisions. Then return to the cabin, with a big open fire, a record player and peace.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

Gardening is seen as a pastime that is almost like belonging to the Church of England - a sign of maturity and wisdom and right thinking.

My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.

Remote villages and communities have lost their identity, and their peace and charm have been sacrificed to that worst of abominations, the automobile.

In traditional cities like Beijing, Nanjing, and Hangzhou, nature was a very important part of urban planning - not only as a landscape but a part of daily life.

It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.

I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.

Tuscany is so full of history and beauty - you meet wonders of art and architecture on almost every corner. But I love the region's homier aspects: the special sweetness of the tomatoes, the soft mozzarella, the heady scents of basil and garlic everywhere.

The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.

A lovely nook of forest scenery, or a grand rock, like a beautiful woman, depends for much of its attractiveness upon the attendance sense of freedom from whatever is low; upon a sense of purity and of romance.

I love to be surrounded by nature.

It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life.

We live in a state with a wonderful climate and plenty of natural beauty, from the shores of Cumberland Island to the Chattahoochee River to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

But if each man could have his own house, a large garden to cultivate and healthy surroundings - then, I thought, there will be for them a better opportunity of a happy family life.

Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life.

The most enjoyable things are the old eighteenth-century terraces that are still standing, that domestic architecture.

Quality of life actually begins at home - it's in your street, around your community.

God made the country, and man made the town.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

My early childhood memories center around this typical American country store and life in a small American town, including 4th of July celebrations marked by fireworks and patriotic music played from a pavilion bandstand.

Growing up in the country, you're left to the wilds of your imagination.

I was pleasantly disappointed on entering Bohemia. Instead of a dull, uninteresting country, as I expected, it is a land full of the most lovely scenery. There is every thing which can gratify the eye - high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins.

Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.

I grew up in wide-open spaces, but they didn't have the romantic history of the West.

My father worked in agriculture, and I got to travel round remote rural areas with him and see a bit of the landscape and people.

The quiet rhythmic monotone of the wall of logs fills one with the rustic peace of a secluded nook in the woods.

Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.