Rural Quotes

Frustrated, El Líder went home, rested his pitching arm, and started a revolution in the mountains.

I was born for the peaceful life,for rural quiet:the lyre's voice in the wild is more resounding,creative dreams are more alive.To harmless leisures consecrated,I wander by a wasteful lakeand far niente is my rule.By every morn I am awakened unto sweet mollitude and freedom;little I read, a lot I sleep,fugitive fame do not pursue.Was it not thus in former years,that I spent in inaction, in the shade,my happiest days?

… in these new days and in these new pages a philosophical tradition of the spontaneity of speculation kind has been rekindled on the sacred isle of Éire, regardless of its creative custodian never having been taught how to freely speculate, how to profoundly question, and how to playfully define. Spontaneity of speculation being synonymous with the philosophical-poetic, the philosophical-poetic with the rural philosopher-poet, and by roundelay the rural philosopher-poet thee with the spontaneity of speculation be. And by the way of the rural what may we say? A philosopher-poet of illimitable space we say. Iohannes Scottus Ériugena the metaphor of old salutes you; salutes your lyrical ear and your skilful strumming of the rippling harp. (Source: Hearing in the Write, Canto 19, Ivy-muffled)

It was a country life, a precious existence.

Workers were required to stay six months, and even then permission to quit was not always granted. The factory held the first two months of every worker's pay; leaving without approval meant losing that money and starting over somewhere else. That was a fact of factory life you couldn't know from the outside: Getting into a factory was easy. The hard part was getting out.

I wish I could run away,” Rudger told Jersey as they both rushed in and out of various patients’ rooms, darting around like little ants. “I can’t leave and be on my own though, not right now, anyway.”“Why?” asked Jersey, waving her flashlight in mid-air.Rudger froze for a second, a regretful haze emanating from his eyes. “It’d break her heart if I left.”“Ain’t that normal? For parents to have mixed feelings about their kids growin’ up?”“Not for me, it isn’t.”Jersey made a pitying face in his direction. “So, you wanna keep bein’ towed around with your mom, livin’ in a gross town like Danvers?”“Is there a choice?”“Yeah, there sure is. You can run away and try to be a whole person before it’s too late, or you can live with mommy dearest forever and turn into Norman Bates.

If it ran, a Bean would shoot it. If it fell, a Bean would eat it.

Hush now, ‘tis time to sleep and dream secrets of long ago.

In addition, when they talked as if city people lived by different values, they were not emphasizing abortion, or gay marriage, or the things that are typically pointed to as the cultural issues that divide lower-income whites from the Democratic Party. Instead, the values they talked about were intertwined with economic concerns.

The attendance of that brother was now become like the attendance of a demon on some devoted being that had sold himself to destruction

I keep forgetting that if you live in a big city only mad people talk to themselves.

The world grows ever complex. More urban. Less peaceful.

At last, we arrived home. Indian Vale. The house my father had built that had become mine and that one day would be my daughter’s, if she chose to stay in the area. She wouldn’t, though. Why should she? The young people here moved somewhere else as fast as they could, and the old folks withered away and died. The factories vanished and the mines and mills sank into the ground, and in their places were erected fast food joints and furniture rental places and pawnshops. Sometimes I hear places like where I live called “Real America,” and I know it rankles some folks—city folks, mostly—something awful, and I wish I could tell them it’s only done out of politeness. That it’s only people saying nice things about the dying.

An exaltation of spirit lifted me, as it were, far above the earth and the sinful creatures crawling on its surface; and I deemed myself as an eagle among the children of men, soaring on high, and looking down with pity and contempt on the grovelling creatures below.

If it ran, a Bean would eat it. If it fell, a Bean would eat it.