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Rural Quotes

Browse 42 quotes about Rural.

Rural Quotes

“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.”

LifeWomenCapitalismLaborChinaChineseGirlsGlobalizationCityMigrantsRuralFactoryMigrantManufactureChuqu
Author:Leslie T. Chang
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“People in the city are poor because they are oppressed, discriminated against and alienated; people in the country are poor because they're too stupid to realize they ought to be living in the city.”

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Book:No Place But Here Four Generations of American Literary Friendship and Influence: Melville & Hawthorne, James & Wharton, Porter & Welty, Bishop & Lowell
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“It isn’t just the US: the half of the world’s population that lives in urban areas generates more than 80 percent of global output, while 600 cities that account for just one-fifth of the global population generate more than 60 percent of global output. Urban living is also healthier for the environment as it tends to involve less travel and smaller housing. Add to that the fact that urban dwellers are ideologically different from their rural counterparts: comparatively liberal, international, trade- and migration-loving, in favor of gender equality and gay rights, environment-defending, and open-minded in matters of religion. The city is progressive—and it’s where progress happens.”

WorkCitiesEconomyEnvironmentProgressIdeologyProgressiveUrbanGdpRural
Book:The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease
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“I bought every kind of machine that's known- Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers- And all of them stood in the rain and sun, Getting rusted, warped and battered, For I had no sheds to store them in, And no use for most of them. And toward the last, when I thought it over, There by my window, growing clearer About myself, as my pulse slowed down, And looked at one of the mills I bought- Which I didn't have the slightest need of, As things turned out, and I never ran- A fine machine, once brightly varnished, And eager to do its work, Now with its paint washed off- I saw myself as a good machine That Life had never used.”

LifeLonelyAgingRural
Book:Spoon River Anthology
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“They lived in rural Michigan in the pre-automobile age, and for the most part they had never been fifty miles away from the farm or the dusty village streets; yet once, ages ago, they had been everywhere and had seen everything, and nothing that happened to them thereafter meant anything much. All that was real had taken place when they were young; everything after that had simply been a process of waiting for death, which did not frighten them much -- they had seen it inflicted in the worst possible way on boys who had not bargained for it, and they had enough of the old-fashioned religion to believe without any question that when they passed over they would simply be rejoining men and ways of living which they had known long ago.”

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Book:Mr. Lincoln's Army
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“I grew up in a swamp. All who visit see the savage beauty of the place. Those who stay see more. A deep connection. Roots that have grown together for generations. Once as a teen I went with family to a fish fry and sing at Scrub Creek Baptist Church off County Road 351. There a teen girl was very friendly until told to stop. We were cousins. She stomped away – "Is everyone here my DAMN cousin?!" Yes, and we are blessed.”

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Book:Some Books Are Not For Sale
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“In rural England, people live wrapped tight in a cocoon; only their eyes move to make sure nobody gets more than themselves. Popular education has not touched them; they communicate as their fathers did by a flick of the eyeballs, passing down grudges either improve upon or, at very least, in mint condition, from generation to generation.”

CountryHumorHumourEnglandEnglishEnglish LiteratureRural
Book:How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup
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“Finally, we entered Chetaube County, my imaginary birthplace, where the names of the little winding roads and minuscule mountain communities never failed to inspire me: Yardscrabble, Big Log, Upper, Middle and Lower Pigsty, Chicken Scratch, Cooterville, Felchville, Dust Rag, Dough Bag, Uranus Ridge, Big Bottom, Hooter Holler, Quickskillet, Buck Wallow, Possum Strut ... We always say a picture speaks a thousand words, but isn’t the opposite equally true?”

CountryHumorFunnyImaginationComedyRootsSouthWordsSouthernHeritageImaginaryInheritanceRedneckRoadAdageSayingTruismPictureRedneck HumorBeatBirthplaceAppalachiaRuralWhite TrashDeep SouthBackwoodsImaginalRoad NovelReceived Wisdom
Book:Beginner's Luke
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“Quiero contarle cómo se despidió mi abuela de nuestra casa. Le pidió a papá que sacara del desván un saco de grano y lo esparció por el jardín: "Para los pajarillos de Dios". Recogió en un cesto los huevos y los echó al patio: "Para nuestro gato y para el perro". Les cortó unos trozos de tocinoo. De todos los saquitos echó las simientes: de zanahoria, de calabaza, de pepinos, de cebollas. De diferentes flores. Y las esparció por el huerto: "Que vivan en la tierra". Luego le hizo una reverencia a la casa. Se inclinó ante el cobertizo. Recorrió los manzanos y los saludó a cada uno. Y el abuelo se quitó el gorro cuando nos marchamos.”

FamiliaNaturalezaAbandonoRuralTierraDesastre
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“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.”

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Book:Red Dog
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“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.”

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Book:The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker
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“I am talking of a place in India, at least a third of the country, a fertile place, full of rice fields and wheat fields and ponds in the middle of those fields choked with lotuses and water lilies, and water buffaloes wading through the ponds and chewing on the lotuses and lilies. Those who live in this place call it the Darkness. Please understand, Your Excellency, that India is two countries in one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well off. But the river brings darkness to India—the black river.”

DarknessIndiaInequalityRuralWhite Tiger
Author:Aravind Adiga
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