Quotes about countryside (86 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I could not appreciate his [ Boudin ] paintings and when he offered to take me with him to paint outdoors in the open countryside, I always found a pretext and refused politely. But when summer came, I was more or less free to dispose of my time as I wished and I had no feasible excuse left to give him and gave in. Thus it was, that Boudin - with his inexhaustible kindness - took it upon himself to educate me. With time, my eyes began to open and I really started to understand nature. I also learned to love it. I would analyze its forms with my pencil. I would study its colorations.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

quote from an interview Claude Monet par lui-meme, by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in 'Le Temps newspaper', 26 November 1900
about Eugène Boudin, who was landscape-painting in and around Le Havre c. 1856; Monet was 16 years old, then
1900 - 1920

Love , Education , Color , Understanding

“Arise, children of the Fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny's
Bloody banner is raised …
Do you hear, in the countryside,
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They're coming right into your arms
To slaughter your sons, your companions!! To arms, citizens,
Form your battalions,
Let's march, let's march!
Let an impure blood
Soak our fields!”

Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760–1836) French army officer

Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L'étendard sanglant est levé, (bis)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes!</p> <p> Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

Variant translations:

Ye sons of France, awake to glory!
Hark! hark! what myriads bid you rise!
Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary,
Behold their tears and hear their cries!
La Marseillaise (1792)

Children

“Once settled, I hope to produce masterpieces, because I like the countryside very much.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter to Paul Durand-Ruel: as quoted in: Daniel Wildensteijn "Monet's Giveny" in: Monet's Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism http://books.google.nl/books?id=H76Nl_fNgOUC, (1978) p. 16: About the countryside in Giverny
1870 - 1890

Hope

“The death in November of the well-beloved novelist, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay, in his fifties, leaves a void in the life of Bengal. He was unsurpassed in his portrayal of the countryside….”

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (1894–1950) Indian author in Bengali

A challenging decade: Bengali literature in the forties, Lila Ray, 1998

Life , Death

“The proletariat, once having taken power, will fight for it to the very end. While one of the weapons in this struggle for the maintenance and the consolidation of power will be agitation and organization, especially in the countryside, another will be a policy of collectivism. Collectivism will become not only the inevitable way forward from the position in which the party in power will find itself, but will also be a means of preserving this position with the support of the proletariat.”

Leon Trotsky book Results and Prospects

Results and Prospects (1905)

Way , Support , Fight

“Among Troyon's paintings there are two huge ones; Return to the Farm is marvelous with its beautiful stormy sky. There is much windy motion in the clouds, and the cows and dogs are very good. In Going to the Market you see the mist at sunrise. It's superb and, most of all, very luminous. The wide space in View from Surennes is amazing. You feel you are really in the countryside.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

1859 letter to Eugène Boudin, June 3, 1859; as cited in Rodolphe Rapetti (1990) Monet, p. 11
Monet wrote Boudin this letter just after he visited the 1859 Salon.
1850 - 1870

Beauty , Dogs , Feeling , Painting

“The magic of autumn has seized the countryside; now that the sun isn't ripening anything it shines for the sake of the golden age; for the sake of Eden; to please the moon for all I know.”

Elizabeth Coatsworth (1893–1986) American writer

Source: Personal Geography: Almost an Autobiography

Age , Autumn , Sun

“Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.”

Sharon Kay Penman book Time and Chance

Source: Time and Chance

Beauty , Autumn , Painting

“In 1945, peace broke out. It was the end of the Joke. Joke warfare was banned at a special session of the Geneva Convention, and in 1950 the last remaining copy of the joke was laid to rest here in the Berkshire countryside, never to be told again.”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

Source: Monty Python's Flying Circus

Peace

“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 (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

Smile , Beauty

“People in the countryside carry a sense of dignity. They wear it, don't they? Like a badge? I'm being genuine.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

People , Sense

“The same society which receives the rewards of technology must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Message to Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty written to Congress (8 Feb 1965), in Lyndon B. Johnson: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President (1965), Vol.1, 156. United States. President (1963-1969 : Johnson), Lyndon Baines Johnson, United States. Office of the Federal Register — 1970
1960s

World , Beauty , Nature , Problem

“The greatest danger to the British Empire and to the British people is not to be found among the enormous fleets and armies of the European Continent, nor in the solemn problems of Hindustan; it is not in the 'Yellow Peril' nor the 'Black Peril' nor any danger in the wide circuit of colonial and foreign affairs. No, it is here in our midst, close at home, close at hand in the vast growing cities of England and Scotland, and in the dwindling and cramped villages of our denuded countryside. It is there you will find the seeds of Imperial ruin and national decay—the unnatural gap between rich and poor, the divorce of the people from the land, the want of proper discipline and training in our youth, the exploitation of boy labour, the physical degeneration which seems to follow so swiftly on civilized poverty, the awful jumbles of an obsolete Poor Law, the horrid havoc of the liquor traffic, the constant insecurity in the means of subsistence and employment which breaks the heart of many a sober, hard-working man, the absence of any established minimum standard of life and comfort among the workers, and, at the other end, the swift increase of vulgar, joyless luxury—here are the enemies of Britain. Beware lest they shatter the foundations of her power.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 139-140
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life , People , Youth , Law

“Ironically, or so it seemed to Tristam, the day was perfect and the green countryside rolled past in ordered tranquillity, the death of a single man having shockingly little impact on the larger world.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 5 (p. 67)

Death , World , Past , Perfection

“As his life and death suggest, Cicero was addicted to Roman politics; he wrote beautifully about the pleasures of a quiet life in the countryside, but hankered for the hurly-burly of the Senate and the courts. His political theory is reflective but far from dispassionate.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 4 : Roman Insights: Polybius and Cicero

Life , Death , Pleasure

“Midwinter, and the countryside is so still, it seems almost lifeless. But these trees and bushes and grasses around me are living organisms just like animals. And they have to face very much the same sort of problems as animals face throughout their lives if they're to survive. They have to fight one another, they have to compete for mates, they have to invade new territories. But the reason that we're seldom aware of these dramas is that plants of course live on a different time-scale.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Opening words
The Private Life of Plants (1995)

Problem , Tree , Grass , Time

“The dog had no name. For a dog to have a name someone must have him and someone must love him, and a dog must have someone. The dog had no one, and no one had the dog. The dog had only the silent empty countryside of the few houses. The dog had only the crumbs and cleaned bones he could pick up at the few houses. The dog had only himself, so the dog had nothing, and he was afraid.”

Meindert DeJong book Hurry Home

Hurry Home, Candy (1953)

Love , Dogs , Housing

“I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, "Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!"”

Bill Bryson book Notes from a Small Island

Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that.
Notes from a Small Island (1995)

Men , People , Imagination , Motivation

“Wonderful but true! Shall future progeny of men believe, when crops grow again and this desert shall once more be green, that cities and peoples are buried below and that an ancestral countryside vanished in a common doom? Nor does the summit yet cease its deadly thrust.”
Mira fides! credetne virum ventura propago, cum segetes iterum, cum iam haec deserta virebunt, infra urbes populosque premi proavitaque tanto rura abiisse mari? necdum letale minari cessat apex.

Statius Silvae

iv, line 81
Silvae, Book IV

Men , People , Future

“Standing outside a factory farm, the first question that comes to mind is not a moral but a practical one: Where is everybody? Where are the owners, the farmers, the livestock managers, the extra hands, anybody? I have been driving around the North Carolina countryside on a Thursday afternoon in January 2001, pulling in at random to six hog farms, and have yet to find a single farmer or any other living soul. … There are so many factory farms around here that they are easy to miss. I doubt that the average visitor just passing through even knows what they are …”

Matthew Scully (1959) American political writer and speechwriter

Dominion (2002)

Soul , Question

“The German Youth Movement started quite inconspicuously: a band of secondary schoolboys in Berlin, bored to death by their homes and schools and grown-ups in general, sought to elude this adult world by spending their Sundays and holidays roaming the countryside - what we call hiking, an unheard of pursuit in those days…Hiking became symbolic, standing for Back to Nature against modern civilization; the free-lance spirit as against gregariousness, yet, paradoxically, the urge for comradeship against atomizing individualism…In 1933 the Nazis swallowed up the groups on the nationalistic fringe and shattered the bulk of the Bünde as bulwarks of the individualistic and independent spirit…Today, I suppose, for many of its former members the Youth Movement represents no more than a store of youthful memories. But a small but by no means negligible minority did receive a basic shaping and moulding which held good for the rest of their lives, the essence of that fleeting spirit of the Movement: a shared vision of the true nature of man and his place in the universe,…; a special kind of awareness to Nature; an extremely keen sense of intellectual and spiritual responsibility and a peculiar sanity and sobriety of judgment. This is quite a lot to be thankful for.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Appendix, Broken Lights Diaries and Letters 1951-1959.

Death , Youth , World , School

“I have been strongly influenced by the Mahabharata, discourses of the Buddha, Sri Aurobindo and Plato. My masters have been Vyasa, Buddha and Sri Aurobindo, as elucidated by Ram Swarup. … Paganism was a term of contempt invented by Christianity for people in the countryside who lived close to and in harmony with Nature, and whose ways of worship were spontaneous as opposed to the contrived though-categories constructed by Christianity’s city-based manipulators of human minds. In due course, the term was extended to cover all spiritually spontaneous culture of the world – Greek, Roman, Iranian, Indian, Chinese, native American. It became a respectable term for those who revolted against Christianity in the modern West. But it has yet to recover its spiritual dimension which Christianity had eclipsed. For me, Hinduism preserves ancient Paganism in all its dimensions. In that sense, I am a Pagan. The term "Polytheism' comes from Biblical discourse, which has the term 'theism' as its starting point. I have no use for these terms. They create confusion. I dwell in a different universe of discourse which starts with 'know thyself' and ends with the discovery, 'thou art that'…
I met her [Mother Theresa] briefly in Calcutta in 1954 or 1955 when she was unknown. I had gone to see an American journalist who was a friend and had fallen ill, when she came to his house asking for money for her charity set-up. The friend went inside to get some cash, leaving his five or six year old daughter in the drawing room. Teresa told her, "He is not your real father. Your real father is in heaven." The girl said, "He is very ill." Theresa commented, "If he dies, your father does not die. For your real father who is in heaven never 'dies."”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

The girl was in tears.
Interview, The Observer. Date : February 22, 1997. http://sathyavaadi.tripod.com/truthisgod/Articles/goel.htm https://egregores.blogspot.com/2009/10/buddha-sri-aurobindo-and-plato.html https://egregores.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/hindus-and-pagans-a-return-to-the-time-of-the-gods/

Money , People , World , Art

“As soon as the national government can afford, a larger percentage of the Internal Revenue allotment should be given to local government units. It is presently 20%. By devolving added responsibilities, this could eventually go to 60%. This would speed up the development of the countryside.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

Speed

“Your armed forces have toppled the reactionary, backward and corrupt regime. With one strike your heroic army has toppled idols and destroyed them in one of Providence's fateful moments. As of now Libya shall be free and sovereign, a republic under the name of the Libyan Arab Republic. No oppressed or deceived or wronged, no master and no slave; but free brothers in a society over which, God willing, shall flutter the banner of brotherhood and equality. And thus shall we build glory, revive heritage and avenge a wounded dignity. Sons of the Bedouins, sons of the desert, sons of the ancient cities, sons of the countryside, sons of the villages, the hour of work has struck and so let us forge ahead.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Radio broadcast from Benghazi (1 September 1969), quoted in The Libyan Revolution: Its Origins and Legacy (2009) by Nicholas Hagger
Speeches

God , Fate

“It was still the custom of the countryside to build with local materials produced as close to the selected site as possible, for transport was difficult, even the best of country roads being more fitted for horseback traffic rather than heavy loads.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

Source: Dashpers http://www.dashper.net.nz/dashpers.htm (unfinished, unpublished novel), Chapter Two - A House is built

Country

“And Nelly turned to her and laughed a horrible laugh. She startled herself. She paused to light another cigarette, choking, blowing a cloud to hide her face; and when she could, continued in a gentle voice:
"You will do me a favour? Save me from disillusionment. Let the man coming back with you on Wednesday be a sensible man, who admits it all, defeat and hopelessness and the bitterness; but sanity." "But I don't know why I should," said Camilla, seriously.
"Won't you do what I ask, love? I know him, poor lad. I know what's best. I don't want him roaming the countryside, footloose and aimless and perhaps in some pub, on some roadside pick up some other harpy, instead of swallowing the bitter pill and facing the lonely road."”

Christina Stead book Dark Places of the Heart

Dark Places of the Heart (aka Cotters' England) (1966)

Love , Light

“At Queen Philippa's court his fastidious eyes were spared the sight, which was moving Langland to realism, of the disbanded soldiery begging their bread along the countryside. Most of his busy days were spent with princes and potentates, and it is idle to ask how far this experience suits the impartial muse of history…He possessed, too, a prodigious memory; and his keen eye for detail and the wealth and colour of his narrative produced such a record of the fourteenth century as Langland could never have composed. Posterity can but return thanks that the picture has been drawn from both aspects.”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Laurie Magnus A General Sketch of European Literature in the Centuries of Romance (1918) p. 89.
Criticism

History , Business , Memory , Wealth

“The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the countryside and in a more or less patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation. The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation by big industry, loses whatever property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

Way , Parting

“There is a sense of widespread neglect and decay in the field of indigenous education within a few decades after the onset of British rule. (…) The conclusion that the decay noticed in the early 19th century and more so in subsequent decades originated with European supremacy in India, therefore, seems inescapable. The 1769-70 famine in Bengal (when, according to British record, one-third of the population actually perished), may be taken as a mere forerunner of what was to come. (…) During the latter part of the 19th century, impressions of decay, decline and deprivation began to agitate the mind of the Indian people. Such impressions no doubt resulted from concrete personal, parental and social experience of what had gone before. They were, perhaps, somewhat exaggerated at times. By 1900, it had become general Indian belief that the country had been decimated by British rule in all possible ways; that not only had it become impoverished, but it had been degraded to the furthest possible extent; that the people of India had been cheated of most of what they had; that their customs and manners were ridiculed, and that the infrastructure of their society mostly eroded. One of the statements which thus came up was that the ignorance and illiteracy in India was caused by British rule; and, conversely, that at the beginning of British political dominance, India had had extensive education, learning and literacy. By 1930, much had been written on this point in the same manner as had been written on the deliberate destruction of Indian crafts and industry, and the impoverishment of the Indian countryside.”

Dharampal (1922–2006) Indian historian

Dharmapal: The Beautiful Tree, Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century. (1983)

People , Education , Way , Parent

“Macro-economic policy had accelerated the "expulsion" of landless peasants from the countryside leading to the formation of a nomadic migrant labor force moving from one metropolitan area to another.”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 13, Debt and "Democracy" in Brazil, p. 200

“I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me. There's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run, he's fuzzy, get out of here.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

Problem , Thinking

“"We do not encourage initiative," said the factory manager. "What you must do is to learn to work to the safety rules." It was my first day in my first job, as a plant chemist in an explosives factory, located in the English countryside, in July 1941. Happily, he was quite wrong. We were not making some old, tried and tested explosive like nitroglycerine or TNT. It was the first large -scale production of a brand-new chemical, code-named RDX-Research Department eXplosive-developed by a government military research department.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: A Long Search for Information (2004), p. 3.

Learning

“…1776 is a very significant year. and this is not just because the American Revolution began. Watt's patent of the steam engine… Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations… the failure of the French to reorganize their political system occurred in 1776, and so forth. …The destruction of communities, the destruction of religion and the frustration of emotions were greatly intensified by the Industrial Revolution: railroads, factories, growth of cities, technological revolution in the countryside and in the growing of food and so forth.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Religion , Food , Communication , Failure

“That I started [in the creation of his art] from my immediate environment was extremely important to me. Only the things I knew, with which I was familiar, which I had caught on their reality value, I could approach free of extra-pictorial aesthetics and pale romanticism. Of course the question remained how I - who wanted to involve modern life in my art - could continue to seek my inspiration at Machelen-aan-de-Leie, a village in the countryside, far from the city and the crowds. Where can one sense better the infiltration of modern life than in a village in the countryside? In the city everything gets integrated immediately, you can't see clearly the insulating and contrasting-alienating effect of publicity, the gas-station, the concrete, the car, etc. On the other hand, I keep saying that we must continue to see the grass, the corn and the cows. Not within an animistic unity, but from a mentality that has the courage to approach these things freely and ruthless in our era. What ordinary people make out of life is fascinating me.”

Roger Raveel (1921–2013) painter

Dat ik [met het maken van mijn kunst] vertrok uit mijn onmiddellijke omgeving vond ik uiterst belangrijk. Alleen de dingen die ik kende, waarmee ik vertrouwd was, die ik op hun werkelijkheidswaarde had betrapt konden vrij van extra-picturale esthetiek en van bleek romantisme door mij benaderd worden. De vraag bleef natuurlijk hoe ik, die het moderne leven in mijn kunst wou betrekken, mijn inspiratie kon blijven zoeken te Machelen-aan-de-Leie, een dorp op het platteland, ver van de stad en van de drukte. Waar kan men beter het infiltreren van het moderne leven gewaar worden dan in een dorp op het platteland? In de stad wordt alles onmiddellijk geïntegreerd, ziet men niet zo scherp de isolerende en tevens contrasterend-bevreemdende werking van de publiciteit, het benzinestation, het beton, de auto, enz. Aan de andere kant blijf ik ervan overtuigd dat ook het gras, het koren en de koe nog moeten gezien worden. Niet binnen een animistische eenheid, maar wel vanuit een mentaliteit die vrij en meedogenloos deze dingen in ons tijdperk nog zou durven benaderen. Wat de gewone man van het leven maakt, dat boeit mij.
Quote of Raveel, 1969, in the text 'In gesprek met mezelf' ('In conversation with myself'), in the exhibition-catalog of his exhibition in 'De Hallen' (museum in Haarlem, The Netherlands; as cited by Ludo Bekkers in 'Roger Raveel en zijn keuze uit het Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Gent' http://www.tento.be/sites/default/files/tijdschrift/pdf/OKV1975/Roger%20Raveel%20en%20zijn%20keuze%20uit%20het%20Museum%20voor%20Schone%20Kunsten%20in%20Gent.pdf, Dutch art-magazine 'Openbaar Kunstbezit', Jan/Maart 1975, p. 3-4
1960's

Life , People , Art , Cars

“These monster cities we live in today are blights of modern society. They will certainly give way to planned cities interlinked to the countryside. Everybody will live with the natural advantages of the country and the cultural associations of the town.”

James P. Cannon (1890–1974) American politician

What socialist America will look like?

Way , Nature , Country

“You can always tell an old battlefield where many men have lost their lives. The next spring the grass comes up greener and more luxuriant than on the surrounding countryside; the poppies are redder, the corn-flowers more blue. They grow over the field and down the sides of the shell holes and lean, almost touching, across the abandoned trenches in a mass of color that ripples all day in the direction that the wind blows. They take the pits and scars out of the torn land and make it a sweet, sloping surface again. Take a wood, now, or a ravine: In a year's time you could never guess the things which had taken place there.”

William March book Company K

Company K (1933)

Men , Color , Spring , Flowers

“Then give him into the charge of swift messengers to carry him,
of Sleep and Death, who are twin brothers, and these two shall lay him
down presently within the rich countryside of broad Lykia.”

Homér Iliad

XVI. 671–673 (tr. R. Lattimore). Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, VI.278.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Death , Sleep

“Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall — and then they had no choice but to follow them.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, President John F. Kennedy's last formal speech and public words

Books , Way , Boy

“Muslim historians credit all their heroes with many expeditions each of which “laid waste” this or that province or region or city or countryside. The foremost heroes of the imperial line at Delhi and Agra such as Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak (1192-1210 A. D.), Shamsu’d-Dîn Iltutmish (1210-36 A. D.), Ghiyãsu’d-Dîn Balban (1246-66 A D.), Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî (1296-1316 A. D.), Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-51 A. D.), Fîruz Shãh Tughlaq (135188 A. D.) Sikandar Lodî (1489-1519 A. D.), Bãbar (1519-26 A. D.) and Aurangzeb (1658-1707 A. D.) have been specially hailed for “hunting the peasantry like wild beasts”, or for seeing to it that “no lamp is lighted for hundreds of miles”, or for “destroying the dens of idolatry and God-pluralism” wherever their writ ran. The sultans of the provincial Muslim dynasties-Malwa, Gujarat, Sindh, Deccan, Jaunpur, Bengal-were not far behind, if not ahead, of what the imperial pioneers had done or were doing; quite often their performance put the imperial pioneers to shame. No study has yet been made of how much the human population declined due to repeated genocides committed by the swordsmen of Islam. But the count of cities and towns and villages which simply disappeared during the Muslim rule leaves little doubt that the loss of life suffered by the cradle of Hindu culture was colossal.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Life , God , Study , Light

“Miro came of age as an artist just at the time World War 1. ended. With the end of the war came the end of all the new pre-war art conceptions. A young painter could not start as a Cubist or a Futurist, and Dada was the only manifestation at the moment. Miro began by painting farm scenes from the countryside of Barcelona, his native land... A few years later he came to Paris [circa 1914] and found himself among the Dadaists who were, at that time, transmuting into Surrealism. In spite of this contact Miró kept aloof from any direct influence and showed a series of canvases in which form submitted to strong colouring expressed a new two-dimensional cosmogony, in no way related to abstraction.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote in: 'Appreciations of other artists': Joan Miro (painter, sculptor author) 1946, by Marcel Duchamp; as cited in Catalog, Collection of the Societé Anonyme, eds. Michel Sanouillet / Elmer Peterson, London 1975, pp. 143- 159
1921 - 1950

War , Age , World , Art

“It is possible to regulate watercourses over any given distance without embankment works; to transport timber and other materials, even when heavier than water, for example ore, stones, etc., down the centre of such water-courses; to raise the height of the water table in the surrounding countryside and to endow the water with all those elements necessary for the prevailing vegetation. Furthermore it is possible in this way to render timber and other such materials non-inflammable and rot resistant; to produce drinking and spa-water for man, beast and soil of any desired composition and performance artificially, but in the way that it occurs in Nature; to raise water in a vertical pipe without pumping devices; to produce any amount of electricity and radiant energy almost without cost; to raise soil quality and to heal cancer, tuberculosis and a variety of nervous disorders… the practical implementation of this … would without doubt signify a complete reorientation in all areas of science and technology. By application of these new found laws, I have already constructed fairly large installations in the spheres of log-rafting and river regulation, which as is known, have functioned faultlessly for a decade, and which today still present insoluble enigmas to the various scientific disciplines concerned.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger: Our Senseless Toil (1934)

Law , Way , Drink , Nature

“Contrary to what is often thought, excessive hygiene, that is staying in an antibacterial environment, does not necessarily lead to a better health, sometimes it even causes health deterioration. Indirect proof may be that among children of rural backgrounds allergic diseases is less than in urban children. This is because children in the countryside are in contact with a lot more bacteria. You can see that exaggeration is unhealthy in every respect.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Borejza, Tomasz (January 2018): Trochę bakterii nie zaszkodzi https://www.tygodnikprzeglad.pl/troche-bakterii-zaszkodzi/. Przegląd (4/2018): pp. 54–55.

Children , Health , Disease

“In underdeveloped America, the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Guerrilla Warfare (1960)

Fight

“His background is not simply the Abbey School of Dunfermline (where he is reputed to have been a schoolmaster), but the surrounding Scottish countryside and community to which he belonged. His wisdom – and his poems are very wise about life – evidently came from his having lived long and profoundly as a member of that whole Scottish community.”

Robert Henryson (1425–1506) Scottish makar (poet)

John Speirs, in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 85.
Criticism

Life , Wisdom , School , Communication

“It is not a recognisable scene [his two paintings 'Dances at the spring', 1912 - Picabia painted the motion and the excitement of a peasant dance while he was on his honeymoon in the countryside of Italy; one version is lost]. There is no dancer, no spring, no light, no perspective, nothing other than the visible clue of the sentiments I am trying to express... I would draw your attention to a song of colours, which will bring out for others the joyful sensations and feelings inspired in me on those summer days when I found myself somewhere in the country near the Italian border, where there was a spring in a wonderful garden. A photograph of that spring and that garden would in now way look like my painting 'Dance at a spring' I was shown for the first time at the w:Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1912.”

Francis Picabia (1879–1953) French painter and writer

As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 200
1920's

Way , Feeling , Spring , Light

“The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live. With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St. Patrick came to our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago promising happiness here no less than happiness hereafter. It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the island of saints and scholars. It was the idea of such an Ireland - happy, vigorous, spiritual - that fired the imagination of our poets; that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved. One hundred years ago, the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired and moved them spiritually as our people had hardly been moved since the Golden Age of Irish civilisation. Fifty years later, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day. So, later, did the leaders of the Irish Volunteers. We of this time, if we have the will and active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner. We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our eyes, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being, and ever remembering that it is for our nation as a whole that future must be sought.”

Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) 3rd President of Ireland

Radio broadcast http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/eamon-de-valera/719124-address-by-mr-de-valera/, "On Language & the Irish Nation" (17 March 1943), often called "The Ireland that we dreamed of" speech

Life , Wisdom , Men , God

“Egypt has been called the Gift of the Nile. Once every year the river overflows its banks, depositing a layer of rich alluvial soil on the parched ground. Then it recedes and soon the whole countryside, as far as the eye can reach, is covered with Egyptologists.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Cheops, or Khufu

“The presence of the kings of Islam is a great blessing from Allah… You should know that the country of Hindustan is a large land. In olden days, the kings of Islam had struggled hard and for long in order to conquer this foreign country. They could do it only in several turns…
Every (Muslim) king got mosques erected in his territory, and created madrasas. Muslims of Arabia and Ajam (non-Arab Muslim lands) migrated from their own lands and arrived in these territories. They became agents for the publicity and spread of Islam here. Uptil now their descendants are firm in the ways of Islam…Among the non-Muslim communities, one is that of the Marhatah (Maratha). They have a chief. For some time past, this community has been raising its head, and has become influential all over Hindustan…
…It is easy to defeat the Marhatah community, provided the ghãzîs of Islam gird up their loins and show courage…
In the countryside between Delhi and Agra, the Jat community used to till the land. In the reign of Shahjahan, this community had been ordered not to ride on horses, or keep muskets with them, or build fortresses for themselves. The kings that came later became careless, and this community has used the opportunity for building many forts, and collecting muskets…
In the reign of Muhammad Shah, the impudence of this community crossed all limits. And Surajmal, the cousin of Churaman, became its leader. He took to rebellion. Therefore, the city of Bayana which was an ancient seat of Islam, and where the Ulama and the Sufis had lived for seven hundred years, has been occupied by force and terror, and Muslims have been turned out of it with humiliation and hurt…
…Whatever influence and prestige is left with the kingship at present, is wielded by the Hindus. For no one except them is there in the ranks of managers and officials. Their houses are full of wealth of all varieties. Muslims live in a state of utter poverty and deprivation. The story is long and cannot be summarised. What I mean to say is that the country of Hindustan has passed under the power of non-Muslims. In this age, except your majesty, there is no other king who is powerful and great, who can defeat the enemies, and who is farsighted and experienced in war. It is your majesty’s bounden duty (farz-i-ain) to invade Hindustan, to destroy the power of the Marhatahs, and to free the down-and-out Muslims from the clutches of non-Muslims. Allah forbid, if the power of the infidels remains in its present position, Muslims will renounce Islam and not even a brief period will pass before Muslims become such a community as will no more know how to distinguish between Islam and non-Islam. This will be a great tragedy. Due to the grace of Allah, no one except your majesty has the capacity for preventing this tragedy from taking place.
We who are the servants of Allah and who recognise the Prophet as our saviour, appeal to you in the name of Allah that you should turn your holy attention to this direction and face the enemies, so that a great merit is added to the roll of your deeds in the house of Allah, and your name is included in the list of mujãhidîn fi Sabîlallah (warriors in the service of Allah). May you acquire plunder beyond measure, and may the Muslims be freed from the stranglehold of the infidels. I seek refuge in Allah when I say that you should not act like Nadir Shah who oppressed and suppressed the Muslims, and went away leaving the Marhatahs and the Jats whole and prosperous.
The enemies have become more powerful after Nadir Shah, the army of Islam has disintegrated, and the empire of Delhi has become childrens’ play. Allah forbid, if the infidels continue as at present, and Muslims get (further) weakened, the very name of Islam will get wiped out.
…When your fearsome army reaches a place where Muslims and non-Muslims live together, your administrators must take particular care. They must be instructed that those weak Muslims who live in the countryside should be taken to towns and cities. Next, some such administrators should be appointed in towns and cities as would see to it that the properties of Muslims are not plundered, and the honour of no Muslim is compromised.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Letter to Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ruler of Afghanistan. Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, p.83 ff.
From his letters

War , Children , Age , Way

“Now I see what racing skiing is all about. It's all right to miss seeing the trees and the countryside and all the other things when you've got to be in a hurry. And when you're in a war you've got to be in a hurry. Don't you? So I guess maybe racing skiers weren't ruining the sport after all. They were preparing it, if you see what I mean, for the future. Everything has to evolve or else it perishes... I'm almost glad this war came along. It's like a test, isn't it, and only the things and the people who've been evolving the right way survive.”

John Knowles book A Separate Peace

Leper, on the need to change.
Source: A Separate Peace (1959), P. 116-117

War , People , Way , Sport

“Matins, he reads the lesson,
A chasuble of plumage on.
His cry from a grove, his brightshout
Over countrysides rings out,
Hill prophet, maker of moods,
Passion's bright bard of glenwoods.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Plygain y darllain deirllith,
Plu yw ei gasul i'n plith.
Pell y clywir uwch tiroedd
Ei lef o lwyn a'i loyw floedd.
Proffwyd rhiw, praff awdur hoed,
Pencerdd gloyw angerdd glyngoed.
"Y Ceiliog Bronfraith" (The Thrush), line 7; translation from Anthony Conran and J. E. Caerwyn Williams (trans.) The Penguin Book of Welsh Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967) p. 145.

Mood , Passion , Reading , Cry

“The people who lived in the countryside around Treblinka—Poles, for the most part—said that they did not know what was going on in the camp; said that, while in a general way they might have guessed what was going on, they did not know for sure; said that, while in a sense they might have known, in another sense they did not know, could not afford to know, for their own sake.”

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), p. 19

People , Way , Sense , Parting

“After a considerable walk through the forest, where I became acquainted with several of the little lakes I am so fond of, I came to Hestehaven and Lake Carl. Here is one of the most beautiful regions I have ever seen. The countryside is somewhat isolated and slopes steeply down to the lake, but with the beech forests growing on either side, it is not barren. A growth of rushes forms the background and the lake itself the foreground; a fairly large part of the lake is clear, but a still larger part is overgrown with the large green leaves of the waterlily, under which the fish seemingly try to hide but now and then peek out and flounder about on the surface in order to bathe in sunshine. The land rises on the opposite side, a great beech forest, and in the morning light the lighted areas make a marvelous contrast to the shadowed areas. The church bells call to prayer, but not in a temple made by human hands. If the birds do not need to be reminded to praise God, then ought men not be moved to prayer outside of the church, in the true house of God, where heaven's arch forms the ceiling of the church, where the roar of the storm and the light breezes take the place of the organ's bass and treble, where the singing of the birds make up the congregational hymns of praise, where echo does not repeat the pastor's voice as in the arch of the stone church, but where everything resolves itself in an endless antiphony — Hillerød, July 25, 1835”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Men , God , Beauty , Bird

“If we did ten things, nine were bad and got disclosed by the newspapers, we will be over. Then I will go, to the countryside, lead the peasant and revolt. If the Liberation Army do not follow me, I will get the Red Army. (July 23, 1959)”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Speech at the Lushan Conference (23 July 1959)

“Perhaps because so much of what the classical economists wrote about traditional systems of agricultural production was divorced from the seemingly more timeless remarks about pure theory, later readers have passed over such portions of their works in haste. … I argue that these interventionist recommendations were a significant element in the overall thrust of their works. Specifically, classical political economy advocated restricting the viability of traditional occupations in the countryside to coerce people to work for wages.”

Michael Perelman (1939) American economist

Source: The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (2000), p. 3

People

“Criticism, like so many other things, keeps to what has been said before and does not get out of the rut. This business of the 'Beautiful' some see it in curved lines, some in straight lines, but all persist in seeing it as a matter of line. I am now looking out of my window and I can see the most lovely countryside; lines just do not come into my head: the lark is singing, the river sparkles with a thousand diamonds, the leaves are whispering; where, I should like to know, are the lines that produce delicious impressions like these? They refuse to see proportion or harmony except between two lines: all else they regard as chaos, and the dividers alone are judge.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote from a letter to Léon Peisse, 15 July 1949; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 68
this quote refers to Delacroix's refusal to use the line as boundary of the form in his painting art, as a too sharp dividing force in the picture - in contrast to the famous classical painter in Paris then, Ingres
1831 - 1863

Love , Beauty , Business , Singing

“Now I drew as wildly during my tramps [during his walks through the Saxonian countryside] as I has fought before.”

Max Pechstein (1881–1955) German artist

in his early youth
As quoted in German Expressionist Painting, Peter Selz, University of California Press, 1974, p. 90

Youth

“Oh, for that matter you must look carefully how in every region of our country the map looks completely different. Not only the pastures have different shades, but the cows are different, yes even the people have, as it were, adopted the character of the soil [where] they were born and raised. That is so evident, that when I still stayed with Roelofs in Brussels [early 1860's] and we used to go to Holland to make our studies in the beautiful part of the season, coming home Roelofs didn't have to tell me where he had been. I recognized it in his work and one by one I called him the spots of our homeland [The Netherlands], where he had made sketches of the countryside and its residents during his study trip.”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: O, wat dat betreft, dan moet ge maar eens goed opletten, hoe in ieder gewest van ons land het plattegrond er geheel anders uitziet; niet alleen het weiland heeft een andere tint, maar de koeien zijn anders, ja de menschen hebben als 't ware het karakter aangenomen van den grond zij zijn geboren en getogen. Dat is zoo sterk, dat toen ik met Roelofs nog in Brussel woonde [vroege 1860's] en wij in 't mooie gedeelte van het seizoen naar Holland plachten te gaan om studies te maken, Roelofs wanneer hij thuis kwam, mij niet behoefde te zeggen waar hij geweest was. Ik zag het aan zijn werk en één voor één noemde ik hem de plekjes van ons vaderland, waar hij op studietocht van het land en de bewoners schetsen had gemaakt.
Quote of Gabriël, in a talk to W. C. Nakken, c. 1880; published in Elsevier's geïllustreerd maandschrift: verzameling van Nederlandsche letterkundige kunstwerken geïllustreerd door Nederlandsche kunstenaars, W. C. Nakken, June/July 1898; taken from the excerpt https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/365 in the Collection RKD Letters, Manuscripts and small Archives], The Hague
1880's + 1890's

People , Beauty , Home , Study

“All this countryside [along the Seine] was calm and peaceful. The strongest emotions I have experienced on the high roads or on the hill tops whence I could see down into the valleys on tot he roofs of houses which I felt I could reach out and touch with my hand.. And then I was tempted to begin painting [c. 1893 - 17 years old]... I composed instinctively and awkwardly. I applied colors with only one idea which justified everything: to express what I felt. I painted hesitantly and exclusively for myself and no one else. It seemed to me that water, sky, clouds and trees understood the happiness they gave me.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 46

Peace , Color , Idea , Tree

“In the year 1910 we were beset by an accumulation of grave issues—rapidly becoming graver. … It was becoming evident to discerning eyes that the Party and Parliamentary system was unequal to coping with them. … The shadow of unemployment was rising ominously above the horizon. Our international rivals were forging ahead at a great rate and jeopardising our hold on the foreign trade which had contributed to the phenomenal prosperity of the previous half-century, and of which we had made such a muddled and selfish use. Our working population, crushed into dingy and mean streets, with no assurance that they would not be deprived of their daily bread by ill-health or trade fluctuations, were becoming sullen with discontent. Whilst we were growing more dependent on overseas supplies for our food, our soil was gradually going out of cultivation. The life of the countryside was wilting away and we were becoming dangerously over-industrialised. Excessive indulgence in alcoholic drinks was undermining the health and efficiency of a considerable section of the population. The Irish controversy was poisoning our relations with the United States of America. A great Constitutional struggle over the House of Lords threatened revolution at home, another threatened civil war at our doors in Ireland. Great nations were arming feverishly for an apprehended struggle into which we might be drawn by some visible or invisible ties, interests, or sympathies. Were we prepared for all the terrifying contingencies?”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

War Memoirs: Volume I (London: Odhams, 1938), p. 21.
War Memoirs

Life , War , Health , Alcohol

“The countryside meant grain and herds, and a river meant fish. And if the sky meant anything, it meant a cruel God who took no notice of their pains and chastised them if they sinned.”

Tanith Lee book The Castle of Dark

Source: The Castle of Dark (1978), Chapter 12 “Lir: The Walled Town” (p. 102)

God , Pain , Fish

“The cities in which we live in are schools of death, because they are dishuman. Each one of them has become a den of noise and of stench, for each of one has became a chaos of buildings, in which we ammass ourselves in millions, losing our life’s reasons. Unfortunates without escape, we feel to have put ourselves, willing or not, in the labyrinth of the absurd, from which we will leave only when we will die, for our destiny is to continue to multiply ourselves, only to die in great numbers. At every turn of the wheel, the cities in which we live in advance slowly one against the other, desiring only to confuse with each other: it’s a run towards the absolute chaos, in the noise and in the stench. At every turn of the wheel the price of the grounds go up, and in the labyrinth which devours the free space the revenue of the investiments builds up, day after day, hundreds of walls. It’s necessary that money give revenues and that the cities in which we live in advance, so it’s right that the houses double their height at every generation, even if the water is missing half of the days. The builders only desire to escape the destiny that they prepare for us, moving towards the countryside.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Translation from: Albert Carao (1919-1917) http://illusioncity.net/albert-caraco/ at illusioncity.net by Snake June 17, 2012
Ma confession (1975)

Life , Death , Money , School

“There are two types of people in this world: those who live in the cities - or 'citizens' as I call them - and those who live in the countryside… who shall remain nameless.”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), Episode Two

People , World

“The Leninist agrarian reform has created a new and powerful layer of popular enemies of socialism on the countryside, enemies whose resistance will be much more dangerous and stubborn than that of the noble large landowners.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: The Russian Revolution (1918), Chapter Two

“[On the attendees at the launch of Apollo 11] Those people were not a stampeding herd, nor a manipulated mob; they did not wreck the Florida communities, they did not devastate the countryside, they did not throw themselves, like whining thugs, at the mercy of their victims - they did not create any victims. They came as responsible individuals able to project the reality of two or three days ahead, and to provide for their own needs. There were people of every age, creed, color, educational level and economic status. They lived and slept in tents, or in their cars, some for several days, in great discomfort and unbearable heat; they did it gamely, cheerfully, gaily; they projected a general feeling of confident goodwill, the bond of a common enthusiasm; they created a public spectacle of responsible privacy - and they departed as they had come, without benefit of press agents.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

People , Age , Education , Cars

“This revolution of music is paralleled by the increasing proliferation of machinery sharing in human labor. In the pounding atmosphere of great cities as well as in the formerly silent countryside, machines create today such a large number of varied noises that pure sound, with its littleness and its monotony, now fails to arouse any emotion.”

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) Electronic music pioneer and Futurist painter

Source: 1910's, The Art of Noise', 1913, p. 5

Music

“No one in that countryside really knew the dog existed. No one was sure. Still the dog had lived there for a year.”

Meindert DeJong book Hurry Home

Hurry Home, Candy (1953)

Dogs

“The very fact that after a while, an increasing proportion of the urban population was "native," i. e., born in cities rather than in the rural areas, and hence more able to take advantage of the possibilities of city life in preparation for the economic struggle, meant a better chance for organization and adaptation, a better basis for securing greater income shares than was possible for the newly "immigrant" population coming from the countryside or from abroad”

Simon Kuznets (1901–1985) economist

Source: "Economic growth and income inequality," 1955, p. 17

Life , Chance

“There are men who cry out, 'We must sacrifice'. Well, let us rather ask them: Who will they sacrifice? Are they going to sacrifice the children who seek the learning, or the sick who need medical care, or the families who dwell in squalor now brightened by the hope of home? Will they sacrifice opportunity for the distressed, the beauty of our land, the hope of our poor? Time may require further sacrifices. And if it does, then we will make them. But we will not heed those who wring it from the hopes of the unfortunate here in a land of plenty. I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. But if there are some who do not believe this, then, in the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than try to strip it from the hands of those that are most in need. And let no one think that the unfortunate and the oppressed of this land sit stifled and alone in their hope tonight. Hundreds of their servants and their protectors sit before me tonight here in this great chamber. The Great Society leads us along three roads—growth and justice and liberation. First is growth—the national prosperity which supports the well-being of our people and which provides the tools of our progress. I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already—in every city and countryside. This nation is flourishing. Workers are making more money than ever—with after-tax income in the past five years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent. More people are working than ever before in our history—an increase last year of two and a half million jobs. Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. For the past five years those earnings have been up over 65 percent, and last year alone they had a rise of 20 percent. Average farm income is higher than ever. Over the past five years it is up 40 percent, and over the past year it is up 22 percent alone.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Men , Money , Children , People

“The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1845)

Way

“This current of thought, which has developed mainly in the United States in the Protestant context, claims witchcraft as its own, which makes me boil. They start off with the principle that in the European countryside a tradition of black magic has survived as an aspect of Paganism. They claim to be bringing forth an organized, conscious religion which has survived through the centuries as an underground movement. This is a historical hallucination and, alas, they are founding a Pagan renaissance upon this decadence.”

Christopher Gérard (1962)

Pagan Power in Modern Europe (1999)

Religion

“You see our new towns, our smiling countryside. I am proud of our achievements. There is an enormous amount more to do. Remember that we are a great crusading body, armed with a fervent spirit for the reign of righteousness on earth. Let us go forward into this fight in the spirit of William Blake: "I will not cease from mental strife/Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand/Till we have built Jerusalem/In England's green and pleasant land."”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Scarborough (1 October 1951), quoted in The Times (2 October 1951), p. 4
Prime Minister

Smile , Sleep , Fight

“The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die. This is not offered in criticism but only as observation. And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 2
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Love , Children , Time , Housing

“Was driving through the countryside today with some people who insisted upon frequent recourse to a roadmap in order to discover, as they put it, "Just where they were."”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967)
Context: Was driving through the countryside today with some people who insisted upon frequent recourse to a roadmap in order to discover, as they put it, "Just where they were." Reflected that for my part I generally have a pretty shrewd idea of just where I am; I am enclosed in the somewhat vulnerable fortress which is my body, and from that uneasy stronghold I make such sorties as I deem advisable into the realm about me. These people seemed to think that whizzing through space in a car really altered the universe for them, but they were wrong; each one remained right in the centre of his private universe, which is the only field of knowledge of which he has any direct experience.

People

“They will send their sinister army armed to the teeth to fight us, assaulting the working class, the peasants and popular masses, spreading their sinister claws. They will try to encircle, isolate, crush and wipe us out. But we are the future, the strength, and history. Comrades, revolution and counterrevolution are also contending forces in our country. They are two parts of a unity of opposites in constant struggle. The reactionaries are armed and concentrated, defending the metropolis and capitals. We are rooted in the countryside, in small villages, with the masses, especially with the poor peasants, with the force of the people, among their disorganized force in order to organize it into a powerful army. But this will not be easy.”

Abimael Guzmán (1934–2021) Peruvian communist

Interview with Chairman Gonzalo

History , Country , Future , People

“Comrades, in this country we are embarking upon a third epoch. The third epoch is a battle between armed revolution and armed counter-revolution, which are prepared for violence. Counter-revolution with its old and bloody violence, peace at the hands of bayonets, their damned wars that annihilate people in the prisons, schools, factories, in the countryside, and even assassinating children with hunger and misery in their maternal wombs.”

Abimael Guzmán (1934–2021) Peruvian communist

"We Are the Initiators" (1980)

School , Hunger , Peace , Country

“It is absolutely necessary for educated young people to go to the countryside to be re-educated by the poor and lower-middle peasants. Cadres and other city people should be persuaded to send their sons and daughters who have finished junior or senior middle school, college, or university to the countryside. Let us mobilize. Comrades throughout the countryside should welcome them.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Dec. 22, 1968
Directives on the Cultural Revolution (1966-1972)

School , Daughters , People , Universe

“There they stand, isolated, majestic, imperious, brooded over by the gigantic water-tower and chimney combined, rising unmistakable and daunting out of the countryside—the asylums which our forefathers built with such immense solidity to express the notions of their day. Do not for a moment underestimate their powers of resistance to our assault.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the annual conference of the National Association of Mental Health in London (9 March 1961), quoted in The Times (10 March 1961), p. 8
1960s

Water

“One would have thought that conservatives would care far more about the conservation of the old ecological order, and about protecting their ancestral lands, forests and rivers. In contrast, progressives could be expected to be far more open to radical changes to the countryside, especially if the aim is to speed up progress and increase the human standard of living. However, once the party line has been set on these issues by various historical quirks, it has become second nature for conservatives to dismiss concerns about polluted rivers and disappearing birds, while left-wing progressives tend to fear any disruption to the old ecological order.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Speed , Nature , Bird , Fear

“We consider that the Cuban Revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the conduct of revolutionary movements in America. They are: (1) Popular forces can win a war against the army. (2) It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them. (3) In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare

Fight , War , Making love , Waiting

“An Indian with a measure of European blood, she returned to India to shed her acquired skin…. She saw her country with new vision and has left a legacy of pictures simple and grand…as a tribute to the Indian countryside and its people.”

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) Hungarian Indian artist

Maic Casey in [Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922-1947, http://books.google.com/books?id=krdWkzVLSbkC&pg=PA236, 2007, Reaktion Books, 978-1-86189-318-5, 45]

People , Country

“It's very beneficial to Mexico that these workers [come to the U. S.]. It relieves a lot of social tension. It empties out the countryside of the poor and the needy. It stops revolution from happening. And it's sending back a tidal wave of money. The remittance money from the United States is the second or third largest source of income in Mexico now. I guess you could argue that we have an extremely generous foreign policy…”

Luis Alberto Urrea (1955) Mexican-American poet

On how migrant workers benefit Mexico in some way in “INTERVIEWS: Luis Alberto Urrea” https://bookpage.com/interviews/8248-luis-alberto-urrea-nonfiction#.XcMKh7lKjcs in BookPage (April 2004)

Money

“Is it possible to be a healthy vegetarian or vegan? I became vegan, let’s see, 32 years ago now. And, I run several miles every day, I go biking 40, 50 miles through the countryside, I work long hours, I feel great, it’s nice waking up with a light, trim body every day. And so many of my vegan friends, and patients, you know, are thriving, ever since their transition to a vegan diet. So, yes, and I’ve seen vegan moms go through healthy vegan pregnancies, deliver healthy vegan children, and raise them to tall, full-size, intelligent vegan adults. And, yes, certainly, all the nutrients are there in the plant kingdom to do this.”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

Interview in the documentary-film Cowspiracy by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn (2014).

Light , Intelligence , Children , Moms

“Is the Farmageddon scenario – the death of our countryside, a scourge of disease and billions starving – inevitable?”

Philip Lymbery book Farmageddon

Farmageddon (2014)

Death , Disease

“It was an unusually hot afternoon. One of those days all slowly ambling bumblebees and honeysuckle and so forth, at which the English countryside, when it puts its mind to it, excels, and quite unlike any summer day anywhere else. Calm and still and lovely, but never without a sense of something impending. The sort of day one misses even as one experiences it.”

China Miéville book The Design

The Design (p. 377)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

Sense , Love , Summer , Making love

“A lot of journalists give me a hard time about how I look, but I've never met a journalist I'd rather look like. And it's not just a performance thing. I don't drive around the countryside in full makeup because it would scare the animals, but I've been wearing makeup since I was a teenager, after I saw Bowie wearing it on Top of the Pops. I immediately borrowed someone's older sister's makeup and put it on. I loved how odd it made me look, and the fact that it upset people. You put on eyeliner and people start screaming at you. How strange, and how marvellous.”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

Quoted in Grant Smithies, "Close encounter with Robert Smith" https://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/features/profiles/earlier-profiles-26519/51564/The-Cures-Robert-Smith, Sunday Star-Times (July 29, 2007)

Animals , Time , Sister , Love

“The writing seemed to just spiral out of me, and if I had to pick a time when I really started this journey it would be that wonderful quiet morning on a verandah so many years ago in the Colombian countryside...”

Irene Sabatini (1967) writer from Zimbabwe

Source: Irene Sabatini Website https://irenesabatini.com/

Time