#country

All this, grassy paddock, cows, trees - he had thought it was Nature. But now he could see that that was ignorance, or lack of imagination. It was not Nature. It was actually property. ↗

— Kate Grenville

#imagination

I found the poems in the fields And only wrote them down ↗

— John Clare

#inspiration #nature #inspirational

Motherhood doesn't have a nationality ↗

— Melinda Cross

#child #country #harlequin #life #mom

...but these backwaters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion... ("Afterward") ↗

— Edith Wharton

#countryside #rural #rural-life #life

And if the world went to hell in a handbasket-as it seemed to be doing-you could say good-bye to everyone and retreat to your land, hunkering down and living off it. ↗

— Jeannette Walls

#life

For the author as for God, standing outwith his creation, all times are one; all times are now. In mine own country, we accept as due and right – as very meet, right, and our bounden duty – the downs and their orchids and butterflies, the woods and coppices, ash, beech, oak, and field maple, rowan, wild cherry, holly, and hazel, bluebells in their season and willow, alder, and poplar in the wetter ground. We accept as proper and unremarkable the badger and the squirrel, the roe deer and the rabbit, the fox and the pheasant, as the companions of our walks and days. We remark with pleasure, yet take as granted, the hedgerow and the garden, the riot of snowdrops, primroses, and cowslips, the bright flash of kingfishers, the dart of swallows and the peaceful homeliness of house martins, the soft nocturnal glimmer of glow worm and the silent nocturnal swoop of owl. ↗

— G.M.W. Wemyss

#country-life #countryside #village-life #life

Who indeed knows the secret of the earthly pilgrimage? Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? Who knows what keeps us living and struggling, while all things break about us? Who knows why the warm flesh of a child is such comfort, when one's own child is lost and cannot be recovered? Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom. ↗

— Alan Paton

#cry-the-beloved-country #life #life

Indeed, there is something in this valley, some spirit and some life, and much to talk about in the huts. Although nothing has come yet, something is here already. ↗

— Alan Paton

#alan-paton #cry-the-beloved-country #life

every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. (p. 18) ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#homeland #love-of-country #origins #love

We love WWII because the cause was so obviously just, because you can't be a good person and say you wouldn't fight against an evil like that. It was so black and white on our side, and on our side so few died. (Our side meaning the lantern-jawed John Wayne Greatest Generation constantly canonized soldiers who strode in late to the graveyard that was Europe. Compared to Jewish, Russian, Roma, and other casualties, our losses were minimal.) We felt so strong. In some ways I think we're always trying to recapture that feeling of being a country of superheroes. With every war we invoke that one, we hope it will be that good. -from her blog ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#strong #superheroes #war #wwii #love