"The simplicity and uniformity of rural occupations, and their incessant practice, preclude any anxieties and agitations of hope and fear, to which employments of a more precarious and casual nature are subject"
About this Quote
That framing lands differently when you remember Falconer’s era and biography. Eighteenth-century Britain is inventing modern precarity: speculative finance, imperial trade, wartime disruption, boom-bust cycles. Falconer himself knew the sea, literally, and his most famous work (“The Shipwreck”) treats labor as exposure to sudden catastrophe. Against that backdrop, rural steadiness reads as envy, even self-preservation: a poet with a sailor’s sense of how quickly fortune flips praising the one life-path that doesn’t force you to live in suspense.
The subtext is quietly political. “Precarious and casual” employments are not just stressful; they’re socially corrosive, producing citizens who are easier to manipulate because they’re always chasing the next break. Falconer’s sentence, with its measured balance and piling clauses, mimics the very steadiness it endorses. It’s a fantasy of equilibrium written in an age learning, rapidly, that work can be a lottery.
Quote Details
| Topic | Contentment |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Falconer, William. (n.d.). The simplicity and uniformity of rural occupations, and their incessant practice, preclude any anxieties and agitations of hope and fear, to which employments of a more precarious and casual nature are subject. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-simplicity-and-uniformity-of-rural-13033/
Chicago Style
Falconer, William. "The simplicity and uniformity of rural occupations, and their incessant practice, preclude any anxieties and agitations of hope and fear, to which employments of a more precarious and casual nature are subject." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-simplicity-and-uniformity-of-rural-13033/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The simplicity and uniformity of rural occupations, and their incessant practice, preclude any anxieties and agitations of hope and fear, to which employments of a more precarious and casual nature are subject." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-simplicity-and-uniformity-of-rural-13033/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
