In Arcadia Quotes

That's the way it is. If you believe in something your very belief renders you unqualified to do it. Your earnestness will come across. Your passion will show. Your enthusiasm will make everyone nervous. And your naivety will irritate. Which means that you will become suspect. Which means you will be prone to disillusionment. Which means that you will not be able to sustain your belief in the face of all the piranha fish which nibble away at your idea and your faith, 'till only the skeleton of your dream is left. Which means that you have to become a fanatic, a fool, a joke, an embarrassment. The world - which is to say the powers that be - would listen to your ardent ideas with a stiff smile on its face, then put up impossible obstacles, watch you finally give up your cherished idea, having mangled it beyond recognition, and after you slope away in profound discouragement it will take up your idea, dust it down, give it a new spin, and hand it over to someone who doesn't believe in it at all. ~ Ben Okri

… the countryside and the village are symbols of stability and security, of order. Yet they are also, as I have noted, liminal spaces, at a very narrow remove from the atavistic Wild. Arcadia is not the realm even of Giorgione and of Claude, with its cracked pillars and thunderbolts, its lurking banditti; still less is it Poussin's sun-dappled and regularised realm of order, where, although the lamb may be destined for the altar and the spit, all things proceed with charm and gravity and studied gesture; least of all is it the degenerate and prettified Arcady of Fragonard and Watteau, filled with simpering courtier-Corydons, pallid Olympians, and fat-arsed putti. (It is only family piety that prevents me from taking a poker to an inherited coffee service in gilt porcelain with bastardised, deutero-Fragonard scenes painted on the sides of every damned thing. Cue Wallace Greenslade: '… "Round the Horne", with Marie Antoinette as the dairymaid and Kenneth Williams as the manager of the camp-site….') No: Arcadia is the very margin of the liminal space between the safe tilth and the threatening Wild, in which Pan lurks, shaggy and goatish, and Death proclaims, from ambush, et in Arcadia ego. Arcadia is not the Wide World nor the Riverbank, but the Wild Wood. And in that wood are worse than stoats and weasels, and the true Pan is no Francis of Assisi figure, sheltering infant otters. The Wild that borders and penetrates Arcady is red in tooth and claw. ~ G.M.W. Wemyss

At all times and in all places, in season and out of season, time is now and England, place is now and England; past and present inter-penetrate. The best days an angler spends upon his river – the river which is Heraclitus' river, which is never the same as the angler is never the same, yet is the same always – are those he recollects in tranquillity, as wintry weather lashes the land without, and he, snug and warm, ties new patterns of dry-fly, and remembers the leaf-dapple upon clear water and the play of light and the eternal dance of ranunculus in the chalk-stream. A cricket match between two riotously inexpert village Second XIs is no less an instance of timeless, of time caught in ritual within an emerald Arcadia, than is a Test at Lord's, and we who love the greatest of games know that we do indeed catch a fleeting glimpse of a spectral twelfth man on every pitch, for in each re-enactment of the mystery there is the cumulation of all that has gone before and shall come after. Et ego in Arcadia. ~ G.M.W. Wemyss

He thinks of the rotten parachute they played with as kids in Arcadia: they hurtle through life aging unimaginably fast, but each grasps a silken edge of memory that billows between them and softens the long fall. ~ Lauren Groff

People talk about me in 'Arcadia' and I think I was okay in it but I've given better performances in other productions that didn't have the same impact. But I knew 'Arcadia' was going to be an event and I wanted to be part of it. ~ Rufus Sewell

I don't think the roles that I'm necessarily known for in this country are my best work, or even anywhere near it. I didn't think I was great in 'Arcadia.' I think it's a great part and a great play and had a lot of attention. ~ Rufus Sewell

Bind Merrimoth," he finally said, "and I'll do that think you like later."
"It's not like my power reacts to the reward system," I said, then added, "What thing?"
The corner of his mouth quirked. "On the chair."
"You mean the thing you like?"
"We both like," he corrected. "Win-win. ~ Jenn Bennett

And perhaps that was where the trouble began. Arcadia was greatly blessed, and sooner or later, every blessing has a price. ~ Rosamund Hodge

You deserve all that and more. It made me happy to see you suffer. I would do it all over again if I could.' I realized I was shaking as the words tumbled out of me. 'I would do it again and again. Every night I would torment you and laugh. Do you understand? You are never safe with me.' I drew a shuddering breath, trying to will away the sting of tears.
He opened his eyes and stared up at me as if I were the door out of Arcadia and back to the true sky. 'That's what makes you my favorite.' He reached up and wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. 'Every wicked bit of you. ~ Rosamund Hodge

It's one thing to study war
and another to live the warrior's life.
- Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C. ~ Steven Pressfield

Do you know what sort of trouble you are courting?"
"Courting?" I gave him a scornful look. "I married it long ago. As our favorite detective, Arcadia Brown, would say to her faithful Garvin, 'Excelsior! ~ Deanna Raybourn

Bit believes the treats' chemical afterburn is what the world beyond Arcadia must taste like. ~ Lauren Groff

There's no doubt about it. Arcadia is Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and, new for him, emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow. ~ Vincent Canby

The Arcadians were chestnut-eaters. ~ Alcaeus

The baby girl who lifted the flaps of Rod Campbell's Dear Zoo becomes the toddler charmed by Ludwig Behmelman's Madeline who turns into the sixth grader listening open-mouthed to Mark Halperin's A Kingdom Far and Clear who grows up to be the young woman swept away by Leo Tolstoy and the beautiful, ill-fated heroine of Anna Karenina. Each book makes straight the path for the next, opening out into sunlit literary meadows where, over time, young people will encounter beautiful writing and characters and scenes that may have been known, loved, and remembered by generations long since past. For the child, or teenager, or anyone else for that matter, getting these tickets to arcadia is a matter of simplicity. All they have to do is listen. ~ Meghan Cox Gurdon

Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than quarks, quasars, big bangs, and black holes.
~ Tom Stoppard

It was inevitable at some point that I would bump into one of my father's plays. The reality of the situation is that I'm a jobbing actor, and any actor would give their eye-teeth to have one of those roles. It's a no-brainer! I'm pleased the stars have aligned around 'Arcadia.' ~ Ed Stoppard

Together, we travel the living river. We turn our faces to the sunlight and fly time and time again home to Kingdom Arcadia. ~ Lisa Wingate

If you're doing something like 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard, which has been done millions and millions of times, and it's been played some unbelievably well-respected actors, there's a lot more pressure there. But I try not to think about all the other people who have done it before me. You've got to try and be original. ~ Bel Powley

To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a lonely, mountainous plateau, overbouldered and strewn with the skulls of sheep slain for vellum and old bitten pinions that tried to be quills. It's forty rough miles by mule from Athens, a city where there's a fair, a movie house, cotton candy. ~ Alexander Theroux

Art and science are made when people are terrified that they are going to die. (about "Arcadia" by Iain Pears) ~ Jen Campbell