Countryside Quotes

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

“Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks, he'd say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was so polluted they couldn't even see the stars. We'd have to be out of our minds to want to trade places with any of them.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers, and when it wasn't raining a diamond dust took over which veiled and yet magnified all things”
― Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie

“Why don’t you put up a stand by the road.” I blurted out.”
― R. Gerry Fabian, Just Out Of Reach

“Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

“It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again.

This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“How lucky country children are in these natural delights that lie ready to their hand! Every season and every plant offers changing joys. As they meander along the lane that leads to our school all kinds of natural toys present themselves for their diversion. The seedpods of stitchwort hang ready for delightful popping between thumb and finger, and later the bladder campion offers a larger, if less crisp, globe to burst. In the autumn, acorns, beechnuts, and conkers bedizen their path, with all their manifold possibilities of fun. In the summer, there is an assortment of honeys to be sucked from bindweed flowers, held fragile and fragrant to hungry lips, and the tiny funnels of honeysuckle and clover blossoms to taste.”
― Miss Read, Village Diary

“WEATHERS
This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly;
And the little brown nightingale bills his best,
And they sit outside at 'The Traveller's Rest,'
And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,
And citizens dream of the south and west,
And so do I.

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.”
― Thomas Hardy

“...but these backwaters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion... ("Afterward")”
― Edith Wharton, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps

“There was so much time that marvelous summer. Day after day, mist rose from the meadow as the sky lightened and hedges, barns and woods took shape until, at last, the long curving back of the hills lifted away from the Plain. It was a sort of stage-magic.”
― J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

“High up on Monte Salvatore the window of some shepherd's hut opened a golden eye. The roses hung their heads and dreamed under the still September clouds, and the water plashed and murmured softly among the pebbles of the shore.”
― E.L. Voynich

“Is then no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault?”
― William Wordsworth

“Dim loneliness came imperceivably into the fields and he turned back. The birds piped oddly; some wind was caressing the higher foliage, turning it all one way, the way home. Telegraph poles ahead looked like half-used pencils; the small cross on the steeple glittered with a sharp and shapely permanence.”
― A.E. Coppard, Dusky Ruth and Other Stories

“Sometimes in life you just have to take a leap of faith.”
― Abby Clements, Amelia Grey's Fireside Dream

“THE MEETING"

"Scant rain had fallen and the summer sun
Had scorched with waves of heat the ripening corn,
That August nightfall, as I crossed the down
Work-weary, half in dream. Beside a fence
Skirting a penning’s edge, an old man waited
Motionless in the mist, with downcast head
And clothing weather-worn. I asked his name
And why he lingered at so lonely a place.

“I was a shepherd here. Two hundred seasons
I roamed these windswept downlands with my flock.
No fences barred our progress and we’d travel
Wherever the bite grew deep. In summer drought
I’d climb from flower-banked combe to barrow’d hill-top
To find a missing straggler or set snares
By wood or turmon-patch. In gales of March
I’d crouch nightlong tending my suckling lambs.

“I was a ploughman, too. Year upon year
I trudged half-doubled, hands clenched to my shafts,
Guiding my turning furrow. Overhead,
Cloud-patterns built and faded, many a song
Of lark and pewit melodied my toil.
I durst not pause to heed them, rising at dawn
To groom and dress my team: by daylight’s end
My boots hung heavy, clodded with chalk and flint.

“And then I was a carter. With my skill
I built the reeded dew-pond, sliced out hay
From the dense-matted rick. At harvest time,
My wain piled high with sheaves, I urged the horses
Back to the master’s barn with shouts and curses
Before the scurrying storm. Through sunlit days
On this same slope where you now stand, my friend,
I stood till dusk scything the poppied fields.

“My cob-built home has crumbled. Hereabouts
Few folk remember me: and though you stare
Till time’s conclusion you’ll not glimpse me striding
The broad, bare down with flock or toiling team.
Yet in this landscape still my spirit lingers:
Down the long bottom where the tractors rumble,
On the steep hanging where wild grasses murmur,
In the sparse covert where the dog-fox patters.”

My comrade turned aside. From the damp sward
Drifted a scent of melilot and thyme;
From far across the down a barn owl shouted,
Circling the silence of that summer evening:
But in an instant, as I stepped towards him
Striving to view his face, his contour altered.
Before me, in the vaporous gloaming, stood
Nothing of flesh, only a post of wood.”
― John Rawson, From The English Countryside: Tales Of Tragedy: Narrated In Dramatic Traditional Verse

“Monfleury est en vente, je perds cinquante mille francs, s'il le faut, mais je suis tout joyeux, je quitte cet enfer d'hypocrisie et de tracasseries. Je vais chercher la solitude et la paix champêtre au seul lieu où elles existent en France, dans un quatrième étage donnant sur les Champs-Élysées.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“You can never please humans. No matter what the weather—shine or rain—some will always complain! Humans are so hard to please that even if you grant them an eternal easy life in Paradise, some will still want to go back to Earth, even if living on Earth means struggling, starving, bleeding, and suffering!”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“They knew her soul, they knew her pains, they knew her past and not only did they not judge her, but above all they loved her for who she was, even if her doing was misinterpreted by those who met her...”
― Francesca Marconi, Il sogno di Perla

“Heed our advice, young man. Do not abandon your own plot of land for the allure of the court. A simple, honest life spent close to the earth keeps a man’s face bronzed and his eyes bright.”
― Avellina Balestri, All Ye That Pass By: Book 1: Gone for a Soldier

“Αλλά η επίμονη προσκόλληση αυτών των φτωχών ανθρώπων στο βράχο που τους έριξε η τύχη όταν έσπερνε πρίγκιπες αποδώ και δούκισσες αποκεί, αυτή η θαρραλέα εγκατάλειψη σε μια ζωή όλο μόχθο, αυτή η πίστη της οικογένειας που αντανακλάται στο επάγγελμα, στο σπίτι και στις πέτρες που το περιτριγυρίζουν, μου μοιάζουν πράγματα σοβαρότατα και πολύ σεβαστά. Μου φαίνεται ότι οι ανησυχίες ενός περιπλανώμενου πνεύματος θα αποκοιμούνταν γλυκά μέσα στη γαλήνη αυτών των ήπιων, απλών συναισθημάτων που κληροδοτούνται ήσυχα και αμετάβλητα από γενιά σε γενιά.”
― Giovanni Verga, Vita dei campi

“Το μελαγχολικό βούισμα των εντόμων της νύχτας, κι εκείνες οι δυο νότες από τη φλογέρα του Γέλι, πάντα ίδιες –ιού! ιού! ιού!-, που σ' έκαναν να σκέφτεσαι πράγματα μακρινά: τη γιορτή του Αϊ-Γιάννη, τη νύχτα των Χριστουγέννων, την αυγή της εκδρομής, όλα εκείνα τα σπουδαία γεγονότα που έχεις ζήσει, που μοιάζουν λυπητερά, τόσο μακρινά. Και σ' έκαναν να κοιτάζεις ψηλά, με τα μάτια υγρά, λες κι όλα τα αστέρια που άρχιζαν να ανάβουν στον ουρανό έριχναν βροχή μέσα στην καρδιά σου και την πλημμύριζαν!”
― Giovanni Verga, Vita dei campi

“Go somewhere where you won't hear the sound of cars! Let the moonlight see you; let the silent hedgehogs pass you by; let the scent of honeysuckle meet your nose; hear the owl's hoot; greet a shooting star; if you see flickering candles instead of electric lights in the windows of stone houses, look, my friend, you are truly in a beautiful place, drink in that beauty to your heart's content, let your soul revive!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“I lay on the grass with the air hanging around me, heavy and still. Not a sound disturbed the night save the trickle and truckle of two waterways, now seeming to chuckle together at some private joke. Perhaps they had seen the Devil ride out so often they found him ridiculous.”
― Dixe Wills, At Night: A Journey Round Britain from Dusk Till Dawn

“I had evidently disturbed the bird from its perch which, on closer inspection, turned out to be something called the Bentinck Fountain. It had clearly seen glories greater than the poor laurels tossed its way now. Once it had been cherished as an effecting feature of a grand estate. Now it stood apologetically by the side of the road, its empty trough sticking out like a beggar's imploring hand.”
― Dixe Wills, At Night: A Journey Round Britain from Dusk Till Dawn

“One... misconception is the idea that England is now mostly concreted over. Coupled to this is the idea that the onward march of bricks and mortar is the main cause of declining species and habitats. Neither assertion is true. Just 8.8 per cent of England is built on; 73 per cent is farmland, and 10 per cent is forestry. The biggest drivers of biodiversity loss in this country are modern agriculture, forestry and shooting. ...the greatest threat to the countryside comes from within it.”
― Guy Shrubsole, The Lie of the Land: Who Really Cares for the Countryside?

“Between 1992 and 2022, the public paid a staggering £9.2 billion to landowners and farmers through environmental stewardship schemes, when measured in cash terms, or £12.5 billion when adjusted for inflation.”
― Guy Shrubsole, The Lie of the Land: Who Really Cares for the Countryside?

“But now to begin about the jaunt. When a'thing was put in an order, me and the guidwife, with Clemy, your lady mother, after an early breakfast, steppit into our own carriage, whereto, behind, divers trunks were strappit; and we trintlet awa down the north road, taking the airt of the south wind that blaws in Scotland. At first it was very pleasant; and I had never been much in the country in a chaise, I was diverted to see how, in a sense, the trees came to meet us, and passed, as if they had been men of business having a turn to do.

...we journeyed on with a sobriety that was heartsome without banter; for really the parks on both sides were salutory to see. The hay was mown, and the corn was verging to the yellow. The haws on the hedges, though as green as capers, were a to-look; the cherries in the gardens were over and gone; but the apples in the orchards were as damsels entering their teens.

When I was nota-beneing in this way, your grandmother consternated a great deal to Clemy, saying she never thought that I had such a beautiful taste for the poeticals, and that I was surely in a fit of the bucolicks. But I, hearing her, told her I had aye a notion of the country; only that I had soon seen fallen leaves were not coined money, which, if a man would gather, it behoved him to make his dwelling-place in the howffs and thoroughfares of the children of men.”
― John Galt, Selected Short Stories

“That night, there was a sliver of a moon over the des Michels farm. Jean put his horse in the stable after the trip back and made his way through the white moonlight to the mas. As he entered the front door, there was first a sound of a violin and then a cello.”
― Daniel Amory, Le Scapegoat

“The air was fresh so early in the morning, the sun was bright but not yet too hot, there were birds chirruping and a pleasant breeze and a view over green fields and all that sort of bloody pastoral nonsense that people used to justify their misfortune in living outside London.”
― K.J. Charles, Wanted, A Gentleman