Famous Quotes & Sayings

James Rebanks Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 14 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by James Rebanks.

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Famous Quotes By James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 1973594

Working up these mountains is as good as it gets, at least as long as you are not freezing or sodden (though even then you feel alive in ways that I don't in modern life behind glass). There is a thrill in the timelessness up there. I have always liked the feeling of carrying on something bigger than me, something that stretches back through other hands and other eyes into the depths of time. To work there is a humbling thing, the opposite of conquering a mountain, if you like; it liberates you from any illusion of self-importance. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 1997109

And then we do it all again, just as our forefathers did before us. It is a farming pattern, fundamentally unchanged from many centuries ago. It has changed in scale (as farms have amalgamated to survive, so there are fewer us of ) but not in its basic content. You could bring a Viking man to stand on our fell with me and he would understand what we were doing and the basic pattern of our farming year. The timing of each task varies depending on the different valleys and farms. Things are driven by the seasons and necessity, but not our will." (p. 32) — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 694387

It was like his code of honour. Work that needs doing should be done. Work is its own reward. Never step back from work or you look bad. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 537028

[O]ccasionally the sunlight through the library windows would catch my eye, and I knew I should be out in that. I felt as if I had cut myself adrift from everything I loved. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 833550

The only way out was to go back the next year and buy his sheep and pay over the odds to make up for it, so he did. Neither of these men cared remotely about "maximizing profit" in the short-term in the way a modern business person in a city would; they both valued their good names and their reputations for integrity far more highly than making a quick buck. If you said you would do a thing, you'd better do it. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 910991

When we call it 'our' landscape, we mean it as a physical and intellectual reality. There is nothing chosen about it. This landscape is our home and we rarely stray far from it, or endure anywhere else for long before returning. This may seem like a lack of imagination or adventure, but I don't care. I love this place; for me it is the beginning and the end of everything, and everywhere else feels like nowhere. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 947583

If you read more, worked harder, thought things through smartly, or wrote or argued better than other people, you won. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 1045750

Books were considered a sign of idleness at best and dangerous at worst. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 1048951

Later I would understand that modern industrial communities are obsessed with the importance of 'going somewhere' and 'doing something with your life'. The implication is an idea I have come to hate, that staying local and doing physical work doesn't count for much. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 1155139

It feels strange to be home, as if I am now just a visitor to the land that I love, no longer really a part of it. I understand for the first time that our sense of belonging is all about participation. We belong because we are part of the work of this place. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 1401644

I have seen the tourism market shift over the last ten years with greater value attached to the culture of places, seen people growing sick of plastic phoniness and genuinely wanting to experience places and people that do different things. I see how bored we have grown of ourselves in the modern Western world and how people can fight back and shape their futures using their history as an advantage not an obligation. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 1624079

He asked what I made of the other students, so I told him. They were OK, but they were all very similar; they struggled to have different opinions because they'd never failed at anything or been nobodies, and they thought they would always win. But this isn't most people's experience of life. He asked me what could be done about it. I told him the answer was to send them all out for a year to do some dead-end job like working in a chicken-processing plant or spreading muck with a tractor. It would do more good than a gap year in Peru. He laughed and thought this tremendously witty. It wasn't meant to be funny. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 1829178

This crappy, mean, broken-down school took five years of my life. I'd be mad, but for the fact that it taught me more about who I was than anything else I have ever done. It also made me think that modern life is rubbish for so many people. How few choices it gives them. How it lays out in front of them a future that bores most of them so much they can't wait to get smashed out of their heads each weekend. How little most people are believed in, and how much it asks of so many people for so little in return. — James Rebanks

James Rebanks Quotes 2062962

We don't give up, even when things are bad.
We pay our debts.
We work hard.
We act decently.
We help our neighbours if they need it.
We do what we say we will do.
We don't want much attention.
We look after our own.
We are proud of what we do.
We try to be quietly smart.
We take chances sometimes to get on.
We will fail sometimes.
We will be affected by the wider world...
But we hold on to who we are. — James Rebanks