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
[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
There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets. – Samuel Johnson
