Wisdom From the Agrarians: A Quote Special

A feast of wisdom for the agrarian

Photo by Illiya Vjestica on Unsplash

In my Wisdom From the Agrarians posts, I normally take a single quote from an agrarian writer and offer a short reflection on their wisdom and what it means for us today.

In today’s post, I want to do something a little bit different. I want to give you a feast of their wisdom: a selection of quotes from their work for you to use, think upon, and perhaps even internalise into your own lives and actions in the places where you are.

I am going to draw heavily upon the mid-20th Century English Agrarians here. They are my special interest topic, they are my mentors, and they are the writers whose works I want to master. Their names may be unfamiliar to you at the moment, but I strongly believe they deserve to be as well known as the most famous agrarian: Wendell Berry (and I have it on good authority that he is well acquainted with their works). I wrote a piece last year on why I think they are so worth reading; I hope the feast of quotes to follow amply demonstrates this.

Aesthetic appreciation is inferior to active participation: to see a thing is not as good as to live in it. - C. Henry Warren, The English Countryside.

I belong to the minority which considers the English rural scene as made with hands and, therefore, that the canvas is incomplete unless the painter be taken with the picture. - H. J. Massingham, The English Countryside

Has work in our present civilisation become so detestable, so inhuman and meaningless that in our play our one object is to get away from it, to forget it, and enter into another one of excitement and fantasy, that for a few hours will blot out the memory of it? - H.J. Massingham, Faith of a Fieldsman

The real test of the qualities of a smallholder arises during a depression. - C.H. Gardiner, The Small Farmer

Nor do I believe that farming will ever be itself again until we see it once more with an eye to values rather than quantities and measurements. - H.J. Massingham, The Faith of a Fieldsman

One would not leave the skeleton of a horse lying about one’s fields; no, the thing had life, it would remind us of death. The machine has never lived, it can be safely left lying where it ceased to function. - Adrian Bell, By-Road.

Then think of education. We clutter the mind and call it knowledge. - Adrian Bell, The Flower and the Wheel

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