Quotessence
Home / Authors / Lucy Hughes-Hallett Books
Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Lucy Hughes-Hallett Books

Cultural Historian

Peculiar Ground

A source page for quotes linked to Lucy Hughes-Hallett.

0 quotes

Related Quotes

“The ownership of land is not natural. The American savage, ranging through forests who game and timber are the common benefits of all his kind, fails to comprehend it. The nomad traversing the desert does not ask to whom belong the shifting sands that extend around him as far as the horizon. The Caledonian shepherd leads his flock to graze wherever a patch of nutritious greenness shows amidst the heather. All of these recognise authority. They are not anarchists. They have chieftains and overlords to whom they are as romantically devoted as any European subject might be to a monarch. Nor do they hold as the first Christians did, that all land should be held in common. Rather, they do not consider it as a thing that can be parceled out. “We are not so innocent. When humanity first understood that a man’s strength could create good to be marketed, that a woman’s beauty was itself a commodity for trade, then slavery was born. So since Adam learnt to force the earth to feed him, fertile ground has become too profitable to be left in peace. “This vital stuff that lives beneath our feet is a treasury of all times. The past: it is packed with metals and sparkling stones, riches made by the work of aeons. The future: it contains seeds and eggs: tight-packed promises which will unfurl into wonders more fantastical than ever jeweller dreamed of -- the scuttling centipede, the many-branched tree whose roots, fumbling down into darkness, are as large and cunningly shaped as the boughs that toss in light. The present: it teems. At barely a spade’s depth the mouldy-warp travels beneath my feet: who can imagine what may live a fathom down? We cannot know for certain that the fables of serpents curving around roots of mighty trees, or of dragons guarding treasure in perpetual darkness, are without factual reality. “How can any man own a thing so volatile and so rich? Yet we followers of Cain have made of our world a great carpet, whose pieces can be lopped off and traded as though it were inert as tufted wool.”

EarthLandSlaveryTradeOwnershipNative AmericansLand Ownership
Book:Peculiar Ground
Create image

“We who trade in landskips see the world not as it is but as it will be. When I walk in the park, which is not yet a park but an expanse of ground hitherto not enhanced but degraded by my work in it, I take little note of the ugly wounds where the earth has been heaved about to make banks and declivities to match those of my plan. I see only that the outline has been soundly drawn for the great picture I have designed. It is for Time to fill it with colour and to add bulk to those spare lines -- Time aided by Light and Weather, I suppose I should say as well, aided by God’s will, but it seems to me that to speak of the Almighty in these days is to invoke misfortune. It is more certain and less contentious to note that Water also is essential.”

NatureLandscapeGarden Design
Book:Peculiar Ground
Create image

“I think there's a very fundamental urge to create a safe space, a home; most animals have that impulse, and humans certainly do - with some exceptions, like nomadic people who perhaps don't feel the need to settle in quite that way. But most of us do want to have space, somewhere we feel secure and where we repeatedly return. Somewhere we can sleep without fear. And there's nothing wrong with that desire. It's completely understandable. It only becomes ugly when that creation of a safe space involves making an enclosure from which other people are kept out.”

PeopleThinkingHomeDesireSleepAnimalCreationUglyImpulseSettlingException
Author:Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Create image

“Mr. Donald Trump talking about the US Mexican border, he's not doing anything new or unusual. It's something that's very much in the air and perhaps always has been. The Great Wall of China has been there for a great long time. People have always tried to keep foreigners out. There is a very natural desire, once you've got somewhere cozy, to keep it to yourself, and equally there's a very strong impulse for those who are not at such a safe and prosperous place to try and get in. It's been creating conflict throughout human history.”

PeopleTryingLongDesireStrongNaturalWallConflictImpulseUnusualVery StrongMexicanProsperous
Author:Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Create image

“Whereas if you're a reader, you can enter other people's minds, you can be in direct contact with people who may have lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. You can know what's like to be old if you're young or young if you're old. You can know what it's like to live in a completely different culture and really enter somebody else's mind. There's no amount of historical information that can give you access to the consciousness of a person from another culture or from the past in the way that reading really good novel from that place or time can.”

PeopleGivingMindDifferentPastCultureReadingConsciousnessNovelDirectHistoricalDifferent Cultures
Author:Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Create image

“I actually think history doesn't repeat itself. There are recurrent themes, but they're repeated with variations. Each time there's an immigration crisis, a threat from outside which is met with inhospitable wall building, it's different. And I think it's helpful to notice the big patterns in history, but it's also important to pay attention to the details, which makes each situation distinct from another.”

ThinkingImportantDifferentAttentionSituationBuildingWallCrisisThreatImmigrationPay AttentionHelpful
Author:Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Create image