[T]here is no practice… which tends to renovate the constitution, than a temporary retirement to the country… – John Sinclair, The Code of Health and Longevity, c.1815

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book. – Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave, 1945

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. – Leonardo da Vinci

People tell me that the countryside must always be stupid and backward, and I get angry, as if it were said that only townspeople had immortal souls, and that it was only in the city that the flame of divinity breathed into the first men had an unobscured glow. – George William Russell