Ronald Blythe > Quotes

“This is what luxury means—perfect consideration. We gave, they took. It was the complete arrangement. This is luxury.”
― Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village

“But there was a need to be frightened and it was a poor sort of village which lacked something that would put the wind up both inhabitant and traveller.”
― Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

“Although an excellent cranky historian, he saw himself as an antiquary, and although the dons and collectors and parsons of his tales are presented as conventional types, they are in fact scary examples of learned lonely bachelors going potty.”
― Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

“Richard, Polly and I talked about the Fens, and how they are apt to breed rebels and saints and fancy words. John Skelton, Laureate Parson of Disse, knew a girl who was Benign, courteous, and meek, With wordes well devised; In you, who list to seek, Be virtues well comprised. Her name was Margery Wentworth. I see her catching his eye at matins.”
― Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

“The Green Man is no enemy of Christ”
― Ronald Blythe

“It is the Epiphany. White or gold? says the lectionary. Take your choice. We hear the voices of John and Jeremiah, enlighteners and poets both. We address God as ‘the bright splendour whom the nations seek’.”
― Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

“Sing unto the Lord a new song’, we are told, but we sing Monsell and Heber and Prudentius, of course. It is the best we can do. Their rich language boosts the interior glow.”
― Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

“strode happily into the mud. No birdsong, no firm footing – ‘Are you all right?’ – and no sense, as our forebears would have said. And everywhere an abundance of old deaths and new life, of fallen wood and wild iris shoots, papery reeds and greening mulch.”
― Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

“Diss poet John Skelton before returning to Bottengoms but swift darkness intervened. He had been the wild Rector of the little town in 1502,”
― Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside