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In 1932 a peasant revolt in Su County China stopped collection of the poppy tax.
Serfs were the lowest class of peasants.
We were real peasants.
Leo Tolstoy -- War and Peace
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It was at this shop, working like a peasant, that I met Clifford St. Clair.
Amy Tan -- The Joy Luck Club
and watched the motorbuses come in and unload peasants from the country coming in to the market,
Ernest Hemingway -- The Sun Also Rises
Parish clerks, teachers, and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it’s all about.
Leo Tolstoy -- Anna Karenina
...he said angrily (unaware of the irony that he, a prince, had a right to anger, and the old man, a peasant, did not).
John Gardner -- Grendel
He was disguised as a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife.
Mark Twain -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her despairing regrets and bewildering dreams.
Guy de Maupassant -- The Diamond Necklace
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Can a Russian peasant be said to feel, in comparison with an educated man?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Brothers Karamazov
they treat the peasants like animals
Anton Chekhov -- The Cherry Orchard
He’d leave peasant huts full of malnourished babies and, arriving in Miami Airport, overhear well-dressed people talk about their efforts to lose weight.
Tracy Kidder -- Mountains Beyond Mountains
Not many intellectuals are prepared to shovel manure with the peasants and then go home and write a "little book" called War and Peace.
Athol Fugard -- Master Harold...and the Boys
Our peasants are hard and cunning when they bargain.
Erich Maria Remarque -- All Quiet on the Western Front
Is the land there owned by the peasants?
Ernest Hemingway -- For Whom the Bell Tolls
He doesn’t want to see peasants. Let him go to centres of culture and civilization.
Ernest Hemingway -- A Farewell to Arms
Oh, you know the stories that the peasants tell about a phantom hound, and so on.
Arthur Conan Doyle -- The Hound of the Baskervilles
But you know, peasants live there, real rude Russian peasants.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- Crime and Punishment
Several other travellers were before them on the bridge, mostly peasants driving laden donkeys and mules or carrying baskets on their heads.
C.S. Lewis -- The Horse and His Boy
peasants greeted them along the roads in the country;
James Joyce -- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Now I see peasants in the field.
Jane Yolen -- The Devils Arithmetic
By threes and fours our class was scattered over the platoons amongst Frisian fishermen, peasants, and labourers with whom we soon made friends.
Erich Maria Remarque -- All Quiet on the Western Front
But one of them picked a carrot out of a peasant’s basket and threw it at Shasta with a rough laugh, saying: "Hey!"
C.S. Lewis -- The Horse and His Boy
But you try to explain that to a black-smith or a labourer or a workman, you try to make that clear to a peasant—and that’s what most of them are here.
Erich Maria Remarque -- All Quiet on the Western Front
The terribles hate the tithes the way peasants despise royalty.
Neal Shusterman -- Unwind
You’re just an ignorant peasant!
Margaret Peterson Haddix -- Uprising
"—as if my mother were some ancient peasant tribeswoman arriving from the tundra with an armful of raw yak meat and some buttons for bartering, trying to get something from Amy that wasn’t on offer.
Gillian Flynn -- Gone Girl
She’s just into those peasant tops these days, so everyone always assumes it’s to hide a belly.
Gayle Forman -- Where She Went
When you crucified that first-century Jewish peasant, we were watching.
Rick Yancey -- The 5th Wave
We regard Mians as noble or landed people, but Gujars and Kohistanis are what we call hilly people, peasants who look after buffaloes.
Malala Yousafzai -- I Am Malala
Bite and break you, if you gave me half an hour I would do such things that these wretched gawping peasants would go mad with fear.
Patrick Rothfuss -- The Name of the Wind
They were dressed like peasants, in baggy, crumpled white trousers and loose shirts.
Chang-rae Lee -- A Gesture Life
But I’m not quite ready to throw away centuries of scientific progress to start thinking like a medieval peasant.
Susan Ee -- Angelfall
Mrs. Traynor stood to the side of the crowd, gazing at the chaos like Marie Antoinette viewing a load of rioting peasants.
Jojo Moyes -- Me Before You
You use the intonation of the peasants.
Sarah J. Maas -- Throne of Glass
"You’re a peasant and a fool and I want my sword."
William Goldman -- The Princess Bride
She was making a Russian peasant costume for a play to he presented in Denver.
Jerry Spinelli -- Stargirl
The barefoot peasant girl ran over.
Pam Munoz Ryan -- Esperanza Rising
That caused quite a sensation among the villagers, who were accustomed to loose-fitting, simple peasant clothing.
Leon Leyson -- The Boy on the Wooden Box
She’d worn black turtlenecks in winter and peasant blouses in summer; her hair had hung long and straight down her back while most girls clamped their pageboys into rollers every night.
Anne Tayler -- A Spool of Blue Thread
He’d made it himself and hoped that the pungent aroma would convince people that he was nothing more than an impoverished peasant.
Joshua Davis -- Spare Parts
Piedmont did not realize that his staff reserved the same affection for him that Russian peasants held for Ivan the Terrible.
Pat Conroy -- The Water is Wide
Whether Africans are peasants.
V.S. Naipaul -- A Bend in the River
And in fatuous recollection a Galician peasants’ saying came back to her: I am crawling into his ear.
William Styron -- Sophie’s Choice
Peasants by themselves.
Margaret Atwood -- Cat’s Eye
His torso was naked, his feet were bare, and peasant trousers hung low on his waist.
Becca Fitzpatrick -- Hush, Hush
Cultured as his face and voice were, he had the square, sturdy hands and feet of a Normandy peasant.
Diana Gabaldon -- Outlander
I spent an unreasonable amount of time scrutinizing a tiny pair of gilt-framed oils hanging over the bureau, one of peasants skating on an ice-pond by a church, the other a sailboat flouncing on a choppy winter sea: decorative copies, nothing special, though I studied them as if they held, encrypted, some key to the secret heart of the old Flemish masters.
Donna Tartt -- The Goldfinch
Can’t have the peasants looking at the king and his court.