Peasants Quotes - Page 7

• For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class

  Hans Koning

  Kings, War, Class

  Hans Koning (1992). “Columbus: His Enterprise: Exploding the Myth”, p.118, NYU Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the United States, many people said you can't have folk music in the United States because you don't have any peasant class. But the funny thing was, there were literally thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who loved old time fiddling, ballads, banjo tunes, blues played on the guitar, spirituals and gospel hymns. These songs and music didn't fit into any neat category of art music nor popular music nor jazz. So gradually they said well let's call it folk music.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Art, Hymns

  Source: www.folkmusicworldwide.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A free peasant means free Poland, for he is the foundation of her greatness and independence.

  Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont

  Mean, Greatness, Independence

  7 Copy quote

• But we remember that it was just precisely in the reign of Richard II that the Peasants' War, following upon the changes wrought by the visitations of the Great Plague, virtually destroyed serfdom as a personal status.

  Edward Jenks

  War, Reign, Remember

  Edward Jenks (1922). “A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is quite affecting to observe how much the olive tree is to the country people. Its fruit supplies them with food, medicine and light; its leaves, winter fodder for the goats and sheep; it is their shelter from the heat and its branches and roots supply them with firewood. The olive tree is the peasant's all-in-all.

  Fredrika Bremer

  Country, Winter, Sheep

  Fredrika Bremer (1863). “Greece and the Greeks: The Narrative of a Winter Residence and Summer Travel in Greece and Its Islands”, p.213

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• some bosses are so greedy (for themselves only) they forget underlings are not thirteenth-century peasants who can be satisfied with a glass of mead and three festivals a year.

  Helen Gurley Brown

  Glasses, Years, Office

  4 Copy quote

• [On Hollywood:] I had gone there expecting to see parties that reflected the stock-in-trade of the movies - glamour. Instead, I found the same attitude toward parties that European peasants had for baths. It was something to be done methodically every Saturday night.

  Elsa Maxwell

  Attitude, Party, Night

  Elsa Maxwell (1955). “I married the world”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... I have always fallen for ads. The sweetheart of J. Walter Thompson, I have a peasant-like belief in whatever miracle they profess to effect.

  Cornelia Otis Skinner

  Miracle, Belief, Sweetheart

  Cornelia Otis Skinner (1948). “That's Me All Over: All the Favorite Absurdities from Dithers and Jitters, Soap Behind the Ears, and Excuse It, Please! Along with Tiny Garments”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• She set about preparing her supper. It would have to be one of those classically simple meals, the sort that French peasants are said to eat and that enlightened English people sometimes enjoy rather self-consciously - a crusty French loaf, cheese, and lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. Of course there should have been wine and a lovingly prepared dressing of oil and vinegar, but Dulcie drank orange squash and ate mayonnaise that came from a bottle.

  Barbara Pym

  Food, Wine, Simple

  4 Copy quote

• I know animals more gallant than the African warthog, but none more courageous. He is the peasant of the plains - the drab and dowdy digger in the earth. He is the uncomely but intrepid defender of family, home, and bourgeois convention, and he will fight anything of any size that intrudes upon his smug existence. ... His eyes are small and lightless and capable of but one expression - suspicion. What he does not understand, he suspects, and what he suspects, he fights.

  Beryl Markham

  Eye, Home, Fighting

  Beryl Markham (2012). “West with the Night”, p.102, Open Road Media

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No -- we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.

  Andrew Jackson

  Military, Fighting, Son

  58 Copy quote

• I have the faith of a Breton peasant and by the time I die I hope to have the faith of a Breton peasant's wife.

  Louis Pasteur

  Wife, Dies

  "Letter to an Atheist" by Michael Patrick Leahy, (p. 61), 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the Hymalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
  He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
  But the she-bear thus accosted, rends the peasant tooth and nail,
  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Women, Pride, Scare

  "The Female of the Species" st. 1 (1911)

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when be sees a camel.

  George Eliot

  Horse, Believe, Camels

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.45, Wordsworth Editions

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My father urged Alan [Lomax] not to repeat the mistakes of the European folklorists who, a century ago, had collected these peasant songs and then arranged them for part choir and accompanied them on piano, and then told the young people of their country, "Don't change a note, this is our sacred heritage." Father said, whether it's a fiddle tune or a gospel song, learn it right off the record from the people who grew up with it. Don't just learn it from a piece of paper.

  Pete Seeger

  Country, Song, Father

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Give me a few minutes.” “You have time.” He sat in the grass. “Are you just going to sit there and watch me?” “Yes. Watching pretty peasant girls is what we poor little rich boys do best.” “Peasant?” He shrugged. “You started the name calling.

  Ilona Andrews

  Girl, Boys, Names

  4 Copy quote

• Those who came to the United States didn't realize they were white until they got here. They were told they were white. They had to learn they were white. An Irish peasant coming from British imperial abuse in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, arrives in the United States. You ask him or her what they are. They say, "I am Irish." No, you're white. "What do you mean, I am white?" And they point me out. "Oh, I see what you mean. This is a strange land."

  Cornel West

  Mean, Land, White

  11 Copy quote

• Life in the country teaches one that the really stimulating things are the quiet, natural things, and the really wearisome things are the noisy, unnatural things. It is more exciting to stand still than to dance. Silence is more eloquent than speech. Water is more stimulating than wine. Fresh air is more intoxicating than cigarette smoke. Sunlight is more subtle than electric light. The scent of grass is more luxurious than the most expensive perfume. The slow, simple observations of the peasant are more wise than the most sparkling epigrams of the latest wit.

  Beverley Nichols

  Life, Wise, Country

  19 Copy quote

• In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?

  Mary McCarthy

  Class, Humanity, Suffering

  6 Copy quote

• Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Drinking, Laughing, Would Be

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've no desire to hang around with a bunch of upper-class delinquents, do twenty minutes' work and then spend the rest of the day loafing about in Paris drinking gallons of champagne and having dozens of moist, pink, highly experienced French peasant girls galloping up and down my - hang on.

  Rowan Atkinson

  Girl, Drinking, Upper Class

  34 Copy quote

• The emperor is naked!" The parade stopped. The emperor paused. A hush fell over the crowd, until one quick-thinking peasant shouted: "No, he isn't. The emperor is merely endorsing a clothing-optional lifestyle!

  James Finn Garner

  Thinking, Naked, Crowds

  James Finn Garner (1994). “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories”, MacMillan Publishing Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A small number of peasants - brave peasants - shot down two Apaches

  Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf

  Funny, Military, Small Numbers

  4 Copy quote

• You peasant swain! You whoreson malt-horse drudge!

  William Shakespeare

  Horse, Sassy, Malt

  William Shakespeare (2003). “The Taming of the Shrew”, p.156, Cambridge University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mighty steam-engine has its germ in the simple boiler in which the peasant prepares his food. The huge ship is but the expansion of the floating leaf freighted with its cargo of atmospheric dust; and the flying balloon is but the infant's soap-bubble lightly laden and overgrown. But the Telescope, even in its most elementary form, embodies a novel and gigantic idea, without an analogue in nature, and without a prototype in experience

  John Timbs

  Nature, Science, Simple

  John Timbs (2012). “Stories of Inventors and Discoverers in Science and the Useful Arts”, p.212, BoD – Books on Demand

  8 Copy quote

  Show source