Meadowland Quotes

“To stand alone in a field in England and listen to the morning chorus of the birds is to remember why life is precious.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field

“I have decided to sleep under the stars... Tonight heaven is my roof, and the hedges my walls... The field folds me in soft wings.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field

“you rise at dawn in May you can savour the world before the pandemonium din of the Industrial Revolution and 24/7 shopping.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: the private life of an English field

“And nothing in nature is wasted. The bodies of the dead meadow ants will go to nourish the soil of the meadow. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Flesh to flesh.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field

“They killed farming a year or so later. And they killed it by putting cabs on tractors. No longer was the farmer alive to the elements, or even close to the earth.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field

“He may well build other nests, which he will display to any female who enters his territory. If she likes any of his pads she will move in, decorate, and bear his children. A slapper seeking a Premier League husband could not be more shallow. Mind you, he is no moral giant. As soon as he has ensconced one female, he will try to tempt another Jenny Wren into one of his spare nests, where she too will give birth to his progeny. The little cock then travels between his families, a bigamous commercial traveller in a 1930s thriller.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: the private life of an English field

“He may well build other nests, which he will display to any female who enters his territory. If she likes any of his pads she will move in, decorate, and bear his children. A slapper seeking a Premier League husband could not be more shallow.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: the private life of an English field

“I suddenly realize that the swifts have gone. No fanfare. Just a prestidigitator's trick, a disappearance into the morning's mist. Inside I sigh a little. One of life's allotment of summers is over.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field

“November is one of my favourite months, with its faded afternoons of cemetery eeriness, and its churchy smell of damp musting leaves.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field

“High summer and one can hear the universe; so overwhelming is e accumulated sound of growing in the meadow and in hedges, of pollen being released, of particles moving in the heat, that all the minute motions together create a continuous him: the sound of summer.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field

“Almost all the things I love are to do with grass. Geese, sheep, cows, horses. Even dogs eat grass.”
― John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field