Merry Christmas

Have a good Christmas and 2017 and thank you all for visiting the Fine Line and Studio Blogs

Wasdale

" For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Everyday I draw, I write, I do something."

(Marjane Satrapi)

" When you are older, you realise that everything else is nothing compared to drawing and painting."

(David Hockney)

Rydal Water and Grasmere

"The fallen leaves in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light."

(Malcolm Lowry)

" Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill."

(John Muir)

Buttermere

"The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits."

(Alfred Wainwright)

"But not even Hitler can damage the fells"

(Beatrix Potter)

The Honister Pass

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"

(Jane Austin)

"There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us, they will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them."

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

Derwent Water

"The first thing which I remember as an event in my life was being taken by my nurse to the brow of Friars crag on Derwent Water."

(John Ruskin)

"For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing often times the still, sad music of humanity."

(William Wordsworth)

Kirkby Lonsdale

"I do not know, in all my own country, still less in France or Italy, a place more naturally divine."

(John Ruskin)

Still grand, and beautiful, and good,

And scorned the swollen raging flood,

Has Lonsdale bridge unshaken stood,

For many ages;

Though antiquarians, who have tried

some date to find, in vain have pried

In ancient Pages.

(A native poet, unattributed)

Romney Marsh

"The world according to the best geographers, is divided into Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Romney Marsh".

(Richard Harris Barham. The leech of Folkstone.)

"an infectious and holding neighbourhood. Once there you are apt to stay."

(Ford Maddox Ford)

Broken

"Falling isn't so bad, you know, it's only landing that hurts."

(Terry Prachett)

"Even more than long hours in the kitchen, fine meals require ingenious organization and experience which is a pleasure to acquire.

(Elizabeth David)

Paris

"Admirable, however, as the Paris of the present day appears to you, build up and put together again in imagination the Paris of the fifteenth century."

(Victor Hugo)

"It's a great city , Paris, a beautiful city --and-- it was very good for me."

(James Baldwin)

Florence

"I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart  you don't even know exist until you love a child."

(Anne Lamont)

"Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them."

(Desiderus Erasmus)

This is what children the world over should look like, not sitting blood soaked,  

dazed and frightened in the back of an ambulance like little Omran Daqneesh in Aleppo. As we become more sophisticated we become more barbaric , I dispair.

Avebury

"Who will go where the standing stones stand,

when the fog rolls in and covers the land,

when the moon is hidden in a cloudy sky,

and the night is as dark as a winters chill,

Whats that? You say you'll dare, you will?

(John Bliven Moran. The Standing Stones)

"Know most of the rooms of thy native country before thou goest over the threshold thereof. Especially seeing England presents thee with so many observables."

(W G Hoskins. The Making of the English Landscape)

Florence

"There's a great power of imagination about these little creatures, and a creative fancy and belief that is very curious to watch...I am sure that horrid matter-of-fact child-rearers...do away with the child's most beautiful privilege."

(William Makepeace Thackery)

"To resist the social pressures  now put even on ones leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate wilfulness about going ones own way, than even before."

(Robert Graves)

The Ridgeway at Uffington

"It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

(Arthur Conan Doyle)

"When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country."

(William Hazlitt)