Quotes & Sayings About Villagers

But it was only the twentieth century in Europe that had universal education and the belief in progress - a net gain of knowledge among all. And that's now been abandoned as a goal." "Why?" "It was too difficult. People weren't prepared to put in the hours on the donkey work - you know, dates and facts and so on. I think in retrospect my generation will be seen as a turning point. From now on there'll be a net loss of knowledge in Europe. The difference between a peasant community in fourteenth-century Iran and modern London, though, is that if with their meager resources the villagers occasionally slipped backward, it was not for lack of trying. But with us, here in England, it was a positive choice. We chose to know less. — Sebastian Faulks

I'll just go guard some villagers or something. Even if they're not in danger. — Gabrielle

Urbanization in India is a slow but sure death for her villages and villagers. — Mahatma Gandhi

Naturally the villagers blamed bears. No one had ever seen a bear in Gavaldon, but this made them more determined to find one. Four years later, when two more children vanished, the villagers admitted they should have been more specific and declared black bears the culprit, bears so black they blended with the night. But when children continued to disappear every four years, the village shifted their attention to burrowing bears, then phantom bears, then bears in disguise ... Until it became clear it wasn't it wasn't bears at all. — Soman Chainani

My name, among our people, means 'slow arrow.' It comes from a story in which the god Fen'Harel was asked by a village to kill a great beast. He came to the beast at dawn, and saw its strength, and knew it would slay him if he fought it. So instead, he shot an arrow up into the sky. The villagers asked Fen'Harel how he would save them, and he said to them, 'When did I say that I would save you?' And he left, and the great beast came into the village that night and killed the warriors, and the women, and the elders. It came to the children and opened its great maw, but then the arrow that Fen'Harel had loosed fell from the sky into the great beast's mouth, and killed it. The children of the village wept for their parents and elders, but still they made an offering to Fen'Harel of thanks, for he had done what the villagers had asked. He had killed the beast, with his cunning, and a slow arrow that the beast never noticed. — Patrick Weekes

Her heart filled with boundless love that surged anew for her father. She felt like rushing to him and planting a quick kiss on his cheek the way she used to when she was a small girl. However, these villagers are not in the habit of kissing their offspring after they grow up. They show their love and affection by stroking their heads, addressing them in endearing words and blessing them. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

My God, look at the size of this man! Quick! Tell the other villagers we're going back to the boats! — Robin Williams

Climate experts say we should tell villagers in developing countries to reduce the amount of cooking smoke they generate to help fix global warming. You know, it's as if these people don't hate us enough already. I mean, they live in mud huts, they have thatch roofs, their clothes are made of straw. We pull up in a bunch of Humvees and SUVs going, 'Hey, you want to cut the smoke out of here?' — Jay Leno

One of the villagers had left his home to try his luck abroad. After twenty five years, having made a fortune, he returned to his country with his wife and child. Meanwhile his mother and sister had been running a small hotel in the village where he was born. He decided to give them a surprise and, leaving his wife and child in another inn, he went to stay at his mother's place, booking a room under an assumed name. His mother and sister completely failed to recognize him. At dinner that evening he showed them a large sum of money he had on him, and in the course of the night they slaughtered him with a hammer. After taking the money they flung the body into the river. Next morning his wife came and, without thinking, betrayed the guest's identity. His mother hanged herself. His sister threw herself into a well. — Albert Camus

A small brazier glowed near the monk's left hand. On a lecturn before him lay pots of paints, brushes, a quill, a pen, a knife, a sizeable handbell, the tooth of some animal
and a piece of parchment.
It was the parchment that commanded the room. Until he saw it Len didn't realize how starved he had been of colour. Villagers dressed in various shades of brown and beige, like their furniture and fields and now, here, was an irruption of the rainbow, as if a charm of goldfinches had landed on the manuscript and been transfixed. — Diana Norman

Some of these Marines learned what they know on Guadalcanal, a basically useless island in the Southwest Pacific where the Empire of Nippon and the United States of America are disputing - with rifles - each other's right to build a military airbase. Early returns suggest that the Nipponese Army, during its extended tour of East Asia, has lost its edge. It would appear that raping the entire female population of Nanjing, and bayoneting helpless Filipino villagers, does not translate into actual military competence. The Nipponese Army is still trying to work out some way to kill, say, a hundred American Marines without losing, say, five hundred of its own soldiers. — Neal Stephenson

TB, malaria, diarrhoea, and dysentery affect many in Palamau. But the cure for almost all ills here is the saline drip. In remote areas, quacks mesmerise people with the drip. Even malaria patients are subjected to it. Many villagers believe that paani chadaana (infusion of water) is a mighty cure. So they borrow money to pay the doctor for the miracle. — P.Sainath

In prehistoric times, early man was bowled over by natural events: rain, thunder, lightning, the violent shaking and moving of the ground, mountains spewing deathly hot lava, the glow of the moon, the burning heat of the sun, the twinkling of the stars. Our human brain searched for an answer, and the conclusion was that it all must be caused by something greater than ourselves - this, of course, sprouted the earliest seeds of religion. This theory is certainly reflected in faery lore. In the beautiful sloping hills of Connemara in Ireland, for example, faeries were believed to have been just as beautiful, peaceful, and pleasant as the world around them. But in the Scottish Highlands, with their dark, brooding mountains and eerie highland lakes, villagers warned of deadly water-kelpies and spirit characters that packed a bit more punch. — Signe Pike

The Charkha supplemented the agriculture of the villagers and gave it dignity. — Mahatma Gandhi

I have finally learned that I am as much a part of this country as those villagers. Whether they like it or not, my umbilical cord is buried in the earth of Vietnam just like theirs. — Sherry Garland

Some of them stole off to those cryptical realms which are known only to cats and which villagers say are on the moon's dark side, whither the cats leap from tall housetops; but one small black kitten crept upstairs and sprang in Carter's lap to purr and play, and curled up near his feet when he lay down at last on the little couch whose pillows were stuffed with fragrant drowsy herbs. — H.P. Lovecraft

How ridiculous," said Princess Farukhuaz, reclining upon a pillow. "A waste of a perfectly good king, all to pacify a few villagers who might have fared as well with a decent exorcist. Nobility is overrated."
"Perhaps," said the nurse. "On the other hand, Vikram might have a greater part to play as a vetala than as a king. The right thing to do and the smart thing to do are not always the same. Only the Lord of Lords knows all, and He created the world three-parts unseen. — G. Willow Wilson

Do not consider any act of service as demeaning. Sweeping the streets, for example, is not below your dignity. Do you not sweep the floor of your homes? Do you not scrub and wash off dirt? When you undertake such tasks, the villagers will also gladly share in them. Why feel ashamed to be good? The ridicule that may be cast on you has been the reward of many saints. It will soon fade away. Muhammad was driven out of Mecca by those who could not appreciate his teachings. Jesus was crucified. But their names resound in the heart of millions. — Sathya Sai Baba

Mon cher docteur! Do you not think I know the female mentality? The village gossip, it is based always, always on the relations of the sexes. If a man poisons his wife in order to travel to the North Pole or to enjoy the peace of a bachelor existence - it would not interest his fellow-villagers for a minute! — Agatha Christie

The village of Wall watched the battle of wills with fascination, wondering what the outcome would be, for no one crossed Bridget Forester: she had a tongue that could, the villagers said, blister the paint from a barn door and tear the bark from an oak. — Neil Gaiman

The villagers had decided that 'practical' meant 'extremely magical and full of interesting objects' and had officially subtitled themselves, Winesap: A Pracktical Towne. — Catherynne M Valente

Hand-spinning is designed to put millions of rupees in the hands of the poor villagers. — Mahatma Gandhi

One day old Thrashbarg said that Almighty Bob had declared that he, Thrashbarg, was to have first pick of the sandwiches. The villagers asked him when this had happened, exactly, and Thrashbarg said it had happened yesterday, when they weren't looking. 'Have faith,' Old Thrashbarg said, 'or burn!'
They let him have first pick of the sandwiches. It seemed easiest. — Douglas Adams

One day, The road came. The road brought with it beer and cigarettes. The road brought Coca-Cola and disposable razors. The road brought all the wonderful things that we westerners know and hold close. But where did the road go? A few of the younger men decided to find out. They rode a buffalo cart along the road until they came to a town and then a train station. They hid in a bunch of rice sacks and took the train to the city, to the lights, to the jobs. There was this thing called money, with it you could buy stuff. You could gamble, drink, and be merry. After a period of two years, one of the young men returned to the village driving a new car. He showed the villagers all the beautiful things that he had bought. He said that there was work for everyone in the cities. He took another young man and two young women with him. They were pretty in a rural way and very hungry for money. Money was good. They liked it. It was a great adventure. — James A. Newman

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled over like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a cafe, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours. — Albert Camus

At first, Comrade Professor described the injustices that the farmers had suffered at the hands of the rich. The time had come, he said, when the villagers could redress their wrongs. He called on the poor farmers to have no mercy on the karakuls, and, what struck us most, he called on us to destroy them. Killing the rich, he declared, was the only way for poor farmers to attain a better and more prosperous life. — Miron Dolot

Tallent notes that the days surrounding the death are marked not by keening or weeping but instead by a dignified, almost majestical, sense of quiet and contemplation. The deceased's immediate family continues to go about their daily rituals, but their silence, their lack of chatter in this busy, intimate community, is a ritual in itself, and the other villagers give them peace until the bereaved signal their intention to return to the life of the community. Sometimes this silent mourning takes only days; sometimes it takes months. But it is a remarkable demonstration of being absent in a place so intensely present, of being granted solitude while surrounded by many — Hanya Yanagihara

In the countryside where the communal pattern was least disturbed, the new religion found the ground less favorable. The villagers (pagani) and the heath-dwellers (heathen) clung longest to the ancient cults. — Eric Hoffer

The elderly man from the ashram, explained to me, if the villagers wanted peace, they would feed and house the peacemakers. If they didn't want peace, no outsiders could help anyway. As we started on our journey, I noticed that without possessions, I felt oddly free. — Gloria Steinem

El-Khan to the villagers. Overlooking Beit Daras were the remnants — Susan Abulhawa

If we want to impart education best suited to the needs of the villagers, we should take the vidyapith to the villages. — Mahatma Gandhi

A few days ago Tan Casipo said to me, 'Some people come here with so much dust in their eyes it's unbearable to talk to them.' What does that say about the monkhood? He can't tolerate people with 'dust in their eyes.' All that these monks have developed here is a safe little self-centred world which they call holy because villagers bow down to them. Living in a forest and wearing a robe doesn't make you better than anybody else. — Tim Ward

Villagers took her sudden death as a curse of verdict stone.... — Jalaj Mishra

Impending war was evidenced by the faraway expression in the older villagers' eyes, the shadows on their faces, not of fear but of sorrow. Because they knew; they had lived through the last war and they remembered the generation of young men who had marched off so willingly and never come back. Those too, like Daddy, who had made it home, but left in France a part of themselves that they could never recover. Who surrendered to moments, periodically, in which their eyes filmed and their lips whitened, and their minds gave over to sights and sounds they wouldn't share but couldn't shake. — Kate Morton

Although the villagers rose with the sun to work the fields, attend to the animals, bake their bread, and begin their long list of chores, for me, Leya Truelong, this was a day like no other. Today, Wren River was touched by the fantastic.

Desiccate by Bonnie Ferrante — Bonnie Ferrante

Because it's not over." Flat. "We have to find out who is trying to jeopardize the program. In order to do that, we needed an agent who was strong enough to survive anything that came his way." Pate's stare drifted over him. "You're the strongest thing I've seen. Even Shane can't compete against you." "Shane's dead." "Is he?" Pate murmured. "I'm sure that's what the villagers all thought a few centuries back, too." What? — Cynthia Eden

The villagers marked the time in two ways: before the swamp and after. What came before was good. And all that came after was not. — Melanie Crowder

Forgetting himself for a moment, Francis brought his hand out from under his frock in order to bless the multitude. When the people saw his wound they bellowed madly. The women dashed forward with mantles outstretched to catch the drops; the men thrust in their hands and anointed their faces with blood. The villagers' expressions grew savage, and so did their souls. They longed to be able to tear the Saint limb from limb in order for each of them to claim a mouthful of his flesh, for they wanted to make him their own, to have him enter them so that they could become one with a saint - could be sanctified. Blind rage had overpowered them; their eyes were leaden, their lips ringed with froth. — Nikos Kazantzakis

The Doctor snorted. 'Wimp!' He squared his shoulders and turned towards the fire, grinning. 'Race you.' And he was off, running. Jack hesitated, sighed, swore, and ran after him. Levin and Krylek, Catherine and the villagers stared after them in astonishment. Two dark figures running though fire ... — Justin Richards

She'd been so busy worrying about soldier boys and villagers she'd forgotten the jungle had hunters of its own, and now she was going to die for it. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Twenty-five minutes ago, I was blissfully invisible. No laughing. No evil grins. No drama. And now? It couldn't be more dramatic. I've got a stepsister masquerading as Cinderella, the chauvinistic villagers think I'm the ugly stepsister, and the boy coming to my side is more likely to snag a prince than I am. — Kelsey Macke

One story sums up their magical quality. On June 30th 1968, at the height of Apple optimism, Paul McCartney and Derek Taylor were driving back to London from Saltaire, Yorkshire, where they had been recording the Black Dyke Mills Band on a song of Paul's called 'Thingummybob'. They were in Bedfordshire. Let's pick a village on the map and pay it a visit, said Beatle Paul. He found a village called Harrold, which they found quite hilarious, and turned off the A5. Harrold turned out to be a picture-perfect village, with a picture-perfect pub at its heart. The pub was closed, but when the villagers saw there was a Beatle at the door they opened it up. Soon the whole village was in the pub, listening to Paul McCartney on the pub piano playing the as-yet-unreleased 'Hey Jude'. Every Harrold resident danced and sang along, and the revelry went on until 3 a.m. It was beautiful, perfect, spontaneous and full of love. Harrold. You couldn't make it up. — Bob Stanley

Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. — Shirley Jackson

Muslim sociologists and anthropologists have argued that Islam in rural India is more Indian than Islamic, in the sense that the faith as practiced by the ordinary Muslim villagers reflects the considerable degree of cultural assimilation that has occurred between Hindus and Muslims in their daily lives. — Shashi Tharoor

I've been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully. — Paul Farmer

Give the villagers village arithmetic, village geography, village history and the literary knowledge that they must use daily, i.e. reading and writing letters, etc. — Mahatma Gandhi

One or two of the villagers have seen it, too, though not as clearly as he did. Old Buttermere said it was a white *thing*, that glided over the ground, and vanished into the shrubbery.'
'And a very good place for it to vanish, too,' said Hugo, wholly unimpressed. 'Give me a sheet, and a night without too much moonlight, and I'll engage to do the same! — Georgette Heyer

I was never afraid of my monsters. I controlled them. I slept with them in the dark, and they never stepped beyond their boundaries. My monsters had never asked to be bora with bolts in their necks, scaly wings, blood hunger in their veins, or deformed faces from which beautiful girls shrank back in horror. My monsters were not evil; they were simply trying to survive in a tough old world. They reminded me of myself and my friends: ungainly, unlovely, beaten but not conquered. They were the outsiders searching for a place to belong in a cataclysm of villagers' torches, amulets, crucifixes, silver bullets, radiation bombs, air force jets, and flamethrowers. They were imperfect, and heroic in their suffering. — Robert McCammon

Long, long ago, before eruptions were invented, the molten lava had to be carried down the mountainside, bucket by bucket, and poured over the sleeping villagers. This took time. — Dave Barry

just like we did back then. But the upgrades weren't done yet, the builders still needed to expand the trench. So, now they are working on that. A couple of notable villagers moved into town. One was named Peter. He claimed to be a great builder and wants to build amazingly tall buildings. Peter proposed to the mayor that we start building higher structures because it would help save space since our town was growing — Steve The Noob

What do you get when you cross an egomaniacal fairy godmother, an arrogant genie, and a couple of wandering plagiarists whose idea of cultural preservation is stealing the stories of unsuspecting villagers and passing them off as their own? — Kate SeRine

In a front of each home garden the villagers fixed a triangular wooden lamp-house on the top of a pole planted on the ground to hold a small statue of Lord Buddha and some deities. They used to offer flowers at this small shrine and light a tiny clay oil lamp. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

I don't know a single person who is not immersed in the digital universe. Even people who are strongly anti-technology are probably voicing that view on a Web site somewhere. Third-world villagers without electricity have cellphones. — George Dyson

I squinted at the western sky behind Thaddeus, a blood-red smear melting into blackness. Twisting my neck, I glanced the opposite direction. My teeth clenched at a magnified, round moon nearly as scarlet as the portending sunset, its luminous face half masked by hazy cloud cover. Hatred, vengeance, anger ... ... such emotions coursed through my veins in a poisonous concoction that muddied my mind, impelling me to grip my sword tighter and fight with every ounce of strength I possessed against those who threatened my family - my kind. Currently, Thaddeus was behaving as such a threat, using his powers of persuasion to condone human sacrifice for some outrageously perceived good. He wanted an offering for the monsters; a desperate, futile offering of human flesh that would in no way protect the other villagers from being mauled as he promised. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Srad was a fruit with mildly narcotic properties- tonight the villagers ingested large quantities of it in order to feel the narcotic effects. — Christie Sims

The heart of the matter, as I see it, is the stark fact that world poverty is primarily a problem of two million villages, and thus a problem of two thousand million villagers. — E.F. Schumacher

Tomorrow these villagers would carry their secret icons into the church without any priest and light the candles themselves, moving together in single-minded grace. Like the school of the fish, so driven to righteousness they could flout the law, declare the safety of their souls, then go home and destroy the evidence. — Barbara Kingsolver

puts her little finger in my face. "I don't speak Behemoth, so I'll talk slow. You should learn some manners before the villagers chase you with fiery torches. You shouldn't go around putting your hands on people, no matter how hot you are. — Alexa Riley

Frankenstein as the underdog. Not the monster. The villagers pursuing him are the monster. — Edward Field

Author relates the reaction of an Irish village to a landowner who tried to raise rents on the land's occupants. The villagers refused to talk to or trade with the man, whose name was Captain Boycott. — Patrick N. Allitt

In 1981, while doing postdoctoral field work in cultural anthropology, Bonnie A. Nardi lived with villagers in Western Samoa, trying to understand the cultural reasons that people there have an average of eight children. — Katie Hafner

And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts. — Emma Donoghue

The only American soldier convicted in the [My Lai Massacre in Vietnam], Lieutenant William Calley, served three months under house arrest. What the massacre drove home to me was that Oriental life was not terribly valuable. You could extinguish hundreds of Orientals - unarmed villagers, farmers, women, toddlers, infants - and the penalty would be napping and watching television in your apartment for twelve weeks. — Alex Tizon

Nobody noticed or cared that one day she turned sideways and slipped through a slit in the world and returned to Peristan, the other reality, the world of dreams whence the jinn periodically emerge to trouble and bless mankind. To the villagers of Lucena she seemed to have dissolved, perhaps into fireless smoke. After Dunia left our world the voyagers from the world of the jinn to ours became fewer in number, and then for a long time they stopped coming completely, and the slits in the world became overgrown by the unimaginative weeds of convention and the thornbushes of the dully material, until they finally closed up completely and our ancestors were left to do the best they could without the benefits or curses of magic. — Salman Rushdie

The dry knowledge of the three R's is not even now, it can never be, a permanent part of the villagers' life. — Mahatma Gandhi

Will hadn't seen him come into the room. He realized that the mysterious figure must have slipped in through a side door while everyone's attention was on the Craftmasters as they made their entrance. Now he stood behind the Baron's chair and slightly to one side, dressed in his usual brown and gray clothes and wrapped in his long, mottled gray and green Ranger's cloak. Halt was an unnerving person. He had a habit of coming up on you when you least expected it - and you never heard his approach. The superstitious villagers believed that Rangers practiced a form of magic that made them invisible to ordinary people. Will wasn't sure if he believed that - but he wasn't sure he disbelieved it either. He wondered why Halt was here today. He wasn't recognized as one of the Craftmasters and, as far as Will knew, he hadn't attended a Choosing session prior to this one. — John Flanagan

The night I was born, my great uncle Moanea, the village forester, shot a wolf. The villagers roasted it in the fire and fed the meat to the dogs. — Teodor Flonta

We are richer in material wealth than those villagers; but their spirit is a nobler spirit than ours. We — Kahlil Gibran

Although people sometimes assume that the happy are self-absorbed and complacent, just the opposite is true. In general, happiness doesn't make people want to drink daiquiris on the beach; it makes them want to help rural villagers gain better access to clean water. — Gretchen Rubin

I watch the Eruptions. Mount Dad, long dormant, now considered armed and dangerous. Mount Saint Mom, oozing lava, spitting flame. Warn the villagers to run into the sea. — Laurie Halse Anderson

It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, and all around length. It hung on the boughs of the forest trees in rounded lumps, even better than apple-blossom, and occasionally slid off the roofs of the village when it saw the chance of falling on some amusing character and giving pleasure to all. The boys made snowballs with it, but never put stones in them to hurt each other, and the dogs, when they were taken out to scombre, bit it and rolled in it, and looked surprised but delighted when they vanished into the bigger drifts. There was skating on the moat, which roared with the gliding bones which they used for skates, while hot chestnuts and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry. The owls hooted. The cooks put out plenty of crumbs for the small birds. The villagers brought out their red mufflers. Sir Ector's face shone redder even than these. And reddest of all shone the cottage fires down the main street of an evening, — T.H. White

What about you? What do you do?" I needed to ask questions, draw him out. I needed to find out all the information I could. My voice sounded strong and smooth, but my hands were shaking. I put them in my lap so he couldn't see.
"I prey on innocent villagers and terrify their children," he said with a nasty smile. "And sometimes when I'm feeling really evil, I read books or paint. — Kate Avery Ellison

Thank you," Simon said. "It's a joke, Isabelle. He's the Count. He likes counting. You know. 'What did the Count eat today, children? One chocolate chip cookie, two chocolate chip cookies, three chocolate chip cookies . . .'"

There was a rush of cold air as the door of the restaurant opened, letting in another customer. Isabelle shivered and reached for her black silk scarf. "It's not realistic."

"What would you prefer? 'What did the Count eat today, children? One helpless villager, two helpless villagers, three helpless villagers . . . — Cassandra Clare

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami - a man who has achieved self-mastery - convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise.
"I told you not to bite," said the swami, "but I did not tell you not to hiss."
"Many people, like the swami's cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite," writes Tavris. — Susan Cain

Its particular interest for Ian, however, lay in its thesis about the history of the Dutch relationship to windmills, for it emphasized that these early industrial objects had originally been felt to have all the pylons' threateningly alien qualities, rather than the air of enchantment and playfulness now routinely associated with them. They had been denounced from pulpits and occasionally burnt to the ground by suspicious villagers. — Alain De Botton

When Tessia and Jayan were served a large, fat rassook each, Jayan had smugly commented that Tessia certainly had a way with villagers and he would not be surprised if she could charm pickpockets into putting money into her wallet. — Trudi Canavan

many villagers still commonly use the unit of measurement dan, literally the amount of weight a grown man can carry over his shoulder. — Dan Washburn

For all my rational Western intellect and education, I was for the moment overwhelmed by a primitive sense of living in a world ordered by a malign and perverted god, and it coloured my view of everything that afternoon - even the coconuts. The villagers sold us some and split them open for us. They are almost perfectly designed. You first make a hole and drink the milk, and then you split open the nut with a machete and slice off a segment of the shell, which forms a perfect implement for scooping out the coconut flesh inside. What makes you wonder about the nature of this god character is that he creates something that is so perfectly designed to be of benefit to human beings and then hangs it twenty feet above their heads on a tree with no branches. — Douglas Adams

All primitive people are frightened of owls,' said Harley. 'The villagers here are scared to death of the gufo. Birds of ill omen. If they see one, they think they'll die. But they never do. See one, I mean, of course,' he added with a laugh. — Francis Brett Young

I myself have been particularly careful never to say a civil word to the United States. I have scoffed at their inhabitants as a nation of villagers. I have defined the 100 % American as 99 % an idiot. And they adore me. — George Bernard Shaw

And that lame butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! — Rudyard Kipling

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner. — Shirley Jackson

If in the past, you didnt cry out when thousands of protestors were killed and injured by Turkey, Egypt and Libya, when more victims than ever were hanged by Iran, women and children in Afghanistan were bombed, whole communities were massacred in South Sudan, 1800 Palestinians were starved and murdered by Assad in Syria, hundreds in Pakistan were killed by jihadist terrorist attacks, 10,000 Iraqis were killed by terrorists, villagers were slaughtered in Nigeria, but you ONLY cry out for Gaza, then you are NOT Pro- Human Rights, you are only Anti-Israel. — Hillel Neuer

The authorities make them hate him. Otsu, these people are simple. They're afraid of the government, so afraid that if it so decrees, they'll drive away their fellow villagers, even their own kin. — Eiji Yoshikawa

I can honestly say I could go two or three days without wondering what Savannah was doing or even thinking about her. Did this make my love less real? I asked myself that question dozens of times during that trip, but I always decided it didn't, for the simple reason that her image would ambush me when I least expected it, overwhelming me with the same ache I had the day I'd left. Anything might set it off: a friend talking about his wife, the sight of a couple holding hands, or even the way some of the villagers would smile as we passed. — Nicholas Sparks

The villagers considered it lucky to make the New Year's first money transaction with her because she was a prosperous person. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Village people had no central conception of truth or time or even of other people's memories; they always just played dumb when he told them they'd changed their stories — Karan Mahajan

[If we extrapolate the United States population down to a 100-people village]This village that you inhabit has 14 illiterate members and 27 who have a college education; 5 of the villagers earn a third of the village's entire income, while 6 of them earn less than .3 percent of it; 40 of them think and hope your village is headed towards a biblical end-times Armageddon; and 7 of them own a Britney Spears album. — Jack Bowen

but one of the guys next to him looks like he eats screaming villagers for breakfast. — Kristen Callihan

The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river ... The word is from the Latin villa, which together with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things are carried ... Hence, too, the Latin word vilis and our vile, also villain. This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them, without traveling themselves. — Henry David Thoreau

Thinking of those times as he passed the cemetery on his way to the evening's festivities, Gabe recalled the day Matty's body had been found and carried home. Gabe had been young then, only eight, a rambunctious resident of the Children's House, happiest with solitary adventures and disinterested in schoolwork. But he had always admired Matty, who had tended and helped Seer with such devotion and undertaken village tasks with energy and good humor. It had been Matty who had taught Gabe to bait a hook and cast his line from the fishing rock, Matty who had shown him how to make a kite and catch the wind with it. The day of his death, Gabe had huddled, heartbroken, in the shadow of a thick stand of trees and watched as the villagers lined the path and bowed their heads in respect to watch the litter carrying the ravaged body move slowly through. Frightened by his own feelings, he had listened mutely to the wails of grief that permeated the community. — Lois Lowry

Some other brown stuff that might not be mud into her tangled hair. All around, villagers wandered with their baskets of brightly colored eggs, looking for the perfect hiding places. Ruth Zardo sat on the bench in the middle of the green tossing — Louise Penny

Along the edge of this green lived a man. His name is not important, as no one ever used it. The villagers only ever called him the Apothecary. — Patrick Ness

One time Allie and I skipped school and went to see this foreign film called Los Diablos, where these villagers found a glowing blue ball and peeled pieces off of it to see what was inside. Only the ball was really radioactive, and they all died from the poison. I think that's what happens when you look too deep inside for the truth. The poison comes out, and you die, even though you have beautiful glowing pieces of blue truth in your fingers. — Michael Thomas Ford

It's like that story of the father whose son breaks his leg. The villagers come up and say, 'Your son broke his leg, what bad luck.' but the father replies, 'Good luck, bad luck, who knows?' Then there's a war and all the young men in the village must fight. There is a terrible battle and most everyone is killed - except for the man's son who couldn't fight because he broke his leg. So the villagers come up to him and say, 'What good luck, your son didn't have to fight and now he is alive.' But the father replies, 'Good luck, bad luck, who knows? — Nic Sheff

Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives- from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango - with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to-date scripts for actors on the tourists' stage. — Daniel J. Boorstin

The villagers were speeding up the circling of events because she was too shortsighted to see that her infidelity had already harmed the village, the waves of consequences would return unpredictably, sometimes in disguise, as now, to hurt her. This roundness had to be made coin-sized so that she would see is circumference: punish her at the birth of her baby. Awaken her to the inexorable. People who refused fatalism because they could invent small resources insisted on culpability. Deny accidents and wrest fault from the stars. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I met a few chimpanzees on my pilgrimages and I wasn't sure if they were just shrivelled-up villagers or chimps... — Jonathan Dunne

Most of the villagers were hiding in the bush, where they were dying from bad water, malaria and malnutrition. — Nicholas D. Kristof

After a few months she left off speculating about the villagers. She admitted that there was something about them which she could not fathom, but she was content to remain outside the secret, whatever it was. She had not come to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts of men. Let her stray up the valleys, and rest in the leafless woods that looked so warm with their core of fallen red leaves, and find out her own secret, if she had one; with autumn it might come back to question her. She wondered. She thought not. She felt that nothing could ever again disturb her peace. Wherever she strayed the hills folded themselves round her like the fingers of a hand. — Sylvia Townsend Warner