Quotes: George Sand. (1922)

From the November 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “The wealth of the soil, the harvests, the fruits, the splendid cattle that grow sleek and fat in the luxuriant grass, are the property of the few, and but instruments of the many. The man of leisure seldom loves, for their own sake, the fields and meadows, the landscape, or the noble animals which are to be converted into gold for his use. He comes to the country for his health, or for change of air, but goes back to town to spend the fruit of his vassal’s labour.

On the other hand, the peasant is too abject, too wretched, and too fearful of the future to enjoy the beauty of the country and the charms of pastoral life. To him, also, the yellow harvest fields, the rich meadows, the fine cattle, represent bags of gold; but he knows that only an infinitesimal part of their contents, insufficient for his daily needs, will ever fall to his share. Yet year by year he must fill those accursed bags, to please his master, and buy the right of living on his land in sordid wretchedness.”

* * *

  “Is not the furrow of the labourer of as much value as that of the idler, even if that idler, by some absurd chance, has made a little noise in the world, and left behind him an abiding name?”

George Sand