A dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford Paperback Reference)

GOD is high above, and the tsar is far away
Russian proverb, meaning that a central power is remote from local interests or concerns. A comparable Chinese saying is the MOUNTAINS are high, and the emperor is far away.

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  1891 G. KENNAN Siberia and Exile System preface The lot of the ‘unfortunates’ to whom ‘God is high above and the Tsar is far away.’ 1915 A. C. LAUT Pioneers of Pacific Coast 34 ‘God is high in the heavens, and the Czar is far away,’ they said. The object was quic profit, and plundering was the easiest way to attain it. 1970 M. LIEBMAN Russian Revolution 24 A vast and miserable mass of peasants for whom, as an old Russian saw had it, God was too high and the Tsar too far away. 1995 B. GRANT In Soviet House of Culture 5 Russian peasants across Siberiaknew their relative independence in the maxim,
  

‘God is high in the sky and the tsar is far away.’ “independence; power; rulers and ruled
GOD made the country, and man made the town
Cf. VARRO De Re Rustica III. i. divina natura dedit agros, ars humana aedificavit urbes, divine nature gave us the fields, human art built the cities.

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  1667 A. COWLEY in J. Wells Poems 2 My father said.. God the first Garden made, & the first City, Cain. 1785 COWPER Task I. 40 God made the country, and man made the town. 1870 H. TENNYSON Memoir 25 Jan. (1897) II. 96 There is a saying that if God made the country, and man the town, the devil made the little country town. 1941 H. MACINNES Above Suspicion x. God made the country, man made the town. Pity men couldn’t learn better. 1977 G. TINDALL Field & Beneath i. It has been said that ‘God made the country and man made the town’, but..the town is simply disguised countryside. ■Nature