I've only been to New Zealand once, about 1989. It was incredibly beautiful, kind of like the ideal of where I live in New England - all that and then some - but I can't say I was there long enough to get any very clear idea.
A very goodly Bay … that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places of Europe, Asia, Africa or America for large and pleasant navigable rivers. Heaven and Earth have never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation.
Published in London as “A Map of Virginia”, 1612
In terms of beautiful views while eating, I love Babington House in Somerset looking onto beautiful lake, beds, hills and forest.
I grew up Windlesham in Surrey, which is a beautiful and quaint village.
Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.
This was my prayer: an adequate portion of land with a garden and a spring of water and a small wood to complete the picture.
I don't have any romantic notions about villages.
Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.
Then amongst flowers and springs, Making delightful sport, Sat lovers without conflict, without flame
Mine be a cot beside the hill; A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear; A willowy brook, that turns a mill, With many a fall shall linger near.
English country life is more like Chekhov than 'The Archers' or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.
Here everything is so wholly what I consider beautiful. In other words, there is peace here.
It is really so nice here-country-busy-busy with so many different kinds of things-... I must say I feel far away in another world here-... always we go to a new place...the people have a kind of gentleness that isn't usual on the mainland.
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.
And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale.
A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; And, deepening still the dreamlike charm, Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.
The castle grounds were gleaming in the sunlight as though freshly painted; the cloudless sky smiled at itself in the smoothly sparkling lake, the satin-green lawns rippled occasionally in a gentle breeze: June had arrived.
I have tender, romantic associations with upstate New York.
Is it where the flow'r of the orange blows, And the fireflies dance thro' the myrtle boughs?
I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, for a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain.
I'm living out a childhood fantasy. Our house is in a historic district of a small town that I used to read about in storybooks.
Everyone can identify with a fragrant garden, with beauty of sunset, with the quiet of nature, with a warm and cozy cottage.
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.
The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.
