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Categorical Condemnation Is The Hatred Of The Mob. It Makes Cowards Brave. And There Is Nothing More Fearful Than A Religious Mob, A Mob Overflowing With Righteousness – As At The Crucifixion And Before And Since. This Can Happen Only After We Have Made A Categorical Refusal To Kindness: To Heretics, Foreigners, Enemies Or Any Other Group Different From Ourselves.
-Wendell Berry
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Categorical Condemnation Is The

Wendell Berry
Categorical Condemnation Is The Hatred Of The Mob. It Makes Cowards Brave. And There Is Nothing More Fearful Than A Religious Mob, A Mob Overflowing With Righteousness – As At The Crucifixion And Before And Since. This Can Happen Only After We Have Made A Categorical Refusal To Kindness: To Heretics, Foreigners, Enemies Or Any Other Group Different From Ourselves.
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Religious
Kindness
Hatred
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There’s Nothing Under The Ground That’s Worth More Than The Little Layer Of Topsoil Sitting On Top Of It.
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If They Had Only Themselves To Consider, Lovers Would Not Need To Marry, But They Must Think Of Others And Of Other Things. They Say Their Vows To The Community As Much As To One Another, And The Community Gathers Around Them To Hear And To Wish Them Well, On Their Behalf And Its Own. It Gathers Around Them Because It Understands How Necessary, How Joyful, And How Fearful This Joining Is. These Lovers, Pledging Themselves To One Another "until Death," Are Giving Themselves Away, And They Are Joined By This As No Law Or Contract Could Join Them.
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We Seem To Know That International Wars Tend Not To Stop With Their Formal "peace Treaties." We Seem Not To Have Thought Enough About The Difference Between The Large Official Events Of Political And Military History And Their Overflow Both Into Recognized Effects And Into The Lives Of Unofficial People Who Suffer Them.
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Condemnation By Category Is The Lowest Form Of Hatred, For It Is Cold-hearted And Abstract, Lacking Even The Courage Of A Personal Hatred.
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When There Are Enough People On The Land To Use It But Not Enough To Husband It, Then The Wildness Of The Soil That We Call Fertility Begins To Diminish, And The Soil Itself Begins To Flee From Us In Water And Wind.
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When You Are Old You Can Look Back And See Yourself When You Are Young. It Is Almost Like Looking Down From Heaven. And You See Yourself As A Young Woman, Just A Big Girl Really, Half Awake To The World. You See Yourself Happy, Holding In Your Arms A Good, Decent, Gentle, Beloved Young Man With The Blood Keen In His Veins, Who Before Long Is Going To Disappear, Just Disappear, Into A Storm Of Hate And Flying Metal And Fire. And You Just Don't Know It.
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Tasks
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I Have Always Loved A Window, Especially An Open One.
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Healthy
I Like The Way That The History Of The Tree Shapes The Tree. There's No Distinction Between The Tree And Its History. You Can Lose Yourself In That Thought.
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Mailboxes
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Generosity
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Baffled
Unemployed
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One Cannot Be Aware Both Of The History Of Christian War And Of The Contents Of The Gospels Without Feeling That Something Is Amiss.
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Country
Mean
Land
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Fall
Cutting
Roots
Sit And Be Still Until In The Time Of No Rain You Hear Beneath The Dry Wind's Commotion In The Trees The Sound Of Flowing Water Among The Rocks, A Stream Unheard Before, And You Are Where Breathing Is Prayer.
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Rocks
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Book
Writing
Culture
From The Union Of Power And Money, From The Union Of Power And Secrecy, From The Union Of Government And Science, From The Union Of Government And Art, From The Union Of Science And Money, From The Union Of Ambition And Ignorance, From The Union Of Genius And War, From The Union Of Outer Space And Inner Vacuity, The Mad Farmer Walks Quietly Away.
Art
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The Road Is A Word, Conceived Elsewhere And Laid Across The Country In The Wound Prepared For It: A Word Made Concrete And Thrust Among Us.
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Concrete
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Beautiful
Thinking
World
History Leaves No Doubt That Among Of The Most Regrettable Crimes Committed By Human Beings Have Been Committed By Those Human Beings Who Thought Of Themselves As Civilized. What, We Must Ask, Does Our Civilization Possess That Is Worth Defending? One Thing Worth Defending, I Suggest, Is The Imperative To Imagine The Lives Of Beings Who Are Not Ourselves And Are Not Like Ourselves: Animals, Plants, Gods, Spirits, People Of Other Countries, Other Races, People Of The Other Sex, Places And Enemies.
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Sex
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Good Farmers, Who Take Seriously Their Duties As Stewards Of Creation And Of Their Land's Inheritors, Contribute To The Welfare Of Society In More Ways Than Society Usually Acknowledges, Or Even Knows. These Farmers Produce Valuable Goods, Of Course; But They Also Conserve Soil, They Conserve Water, They Conserve Wildlife, They Conserve Open Space, They Conserve Scenery.
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Heart
Practice
Luxury
When I Rise Up, Let Me Rise Up Joyful Like A Bird. When I Fall, Let Me Fall Without Regret Like A Leaf.
Regret
Fall
Bird
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Children
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Lakes
There Is A Religious Principle: Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself. But It's Also An Economic Asset. If You've Got A Neighbour, You've Got Help, And This Implies Another Limit. If You Want To Have Neighbours, You Can't Have A Limitless Growth Economy. You Have To Prefer To Have A Neighbour Rather Than To Own Your Neighbour Farm.
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Growth
Want
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Spiritual
Loneliness
Food
A Tree Forms Itself In Answer To Its Place And The Light. Explain It How You Will, The Only Thing Explainable Will Be Your Explanation.” Sabbaths 1999 Iv
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Tree
Answers
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Dream
Love You
Live Your Life
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Grief
Believe
Forever
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Powerful
Government
Roots
A Protest Meeting On The Issue Of Environmental Abuse Is Not A Convocation Of Accusers, It Is A Convocation Of The Guilty. The Realization Ought To Clear The Smog Of Self-righteousness That Has Always Conventionally Hovered Over These Occasions, And Let Us See The Work That Is To Be Done.
Self
Issues
Abuse
If We Are Serious About Peace, Then We Must Work For It As Ardently, Seriously, Continuously, Carefully, And Bravely As We Have Ever Prepared For War.
War
Serious
Prepared
[all The Ancient Wisdom] Tells Us That Work Is Necessary To Us, As Much A Part Of Our Condition As Mortality; That Good Work Is Our Salvation And Our Joy; That Shoddy Or Dishonest Or Self-serving Work Is Our Curse And Our Doom. We Have Tried To Escape The Sweat And Sorrow Promised In Genesis - Only To Find That, In Order To Do So, We Must Forswear Love And Excellence, Health And Joy. (pg. 44, "the Unsettling Of America")
Order
Sweat
America
I Am Not Bound For Any Public Place, But For Ground Of My Own Where I Have Planted Vines And Orchard Trees, And In The Heat Of The Day Climbed Up Into The Healing Shadow Of The Woods.
Nature
Healing
Tree
The Incarnate Word Is With Us, Is Still Speaking, Is Present Always, Yet Leaves No Sign But Everything That Is.
Garden
Stills
Long Live Gravity! Long Live Stupidity, Error, And Greed In The Palaces Of Fantasy Capitalism!
Errors
Long
Stupidity
What Could Be More Superstitious Than The Idea That Money Brings Forth Food?
Ideas
Superstitious
Don't Own So Much Clutter That You Will Be Relieved To See Your House Catch Fire.
Fire
House
Relieved
The Damages Of Our Present Agriculture All Come From The Determination To Use The Life Of The Soil As If It Were An Extractable Resource Like Coal.
Determination
Land
Agriculture
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People
Entrepreneur
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Voice
People
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Government
Citizens
Principles
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Country
Home
Kentucky
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Needs
Novel
If We Represent Knowledge As A Tree, We Know That Things That Are Divided Are Yet Connected. We Know That To Observe The Divisions And Ignore The Connections Is To Destroy The Tree.
Educational
Tree
Connections
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Thinking
Government
Needs
Individualism Is Going Around These Days In Uniform, Handing Out The Party Line On Individualism.
Party
Lines
Uniforms
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Dream
Dirt
Pavement
Give Your Approval To All You Cannot Understand.
Giving
Approval
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Years
Practice
Two
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Retirement
Ambition
Weekend
My Wish Simply Is To Live My Life As Fully As I Can. In Both Our Work And Our Leisure, I Think, We Should Be So Employed. And In Our Time This Means That We Must Save Ourselves From The Products That We Are Asked To Buy In Order, Ultimately, To Replace Ourselves.
Life
Positive
Passion
To Accept That There Is Nothing To Do Is To Despair. It Is To Become In Some Fundamental Way Less Than Human. Those Of Us Who Are Protesting Are Protesting In Part For Our Own Sake To Keep Ourselves Whole As Human Beings.
Despair
Fundamentals
Sake
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Agriculture
Principles
Genius
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People
Shining
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Nature
Believe
Animal
We Conservatives Bemoan The Decline In Values That Has Besieged Our Society. Why Then Should We Not Abhor The Lack Of Morality Involved In Discharging Untested Chemicals Into The Air, Ground, And Water To Alter And Harm, To Whatever Degree, Human Life And Wildlife? As A Conservative, I Do Abhor It.
Air
Water
Degrees
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Cost
Bargains
The Wild Rose” – By Wendell Berry Sometimes, Hidden From Me In Daily Custom And In Ritual I Live By You Unaware, As If By The Beating Of My Heart. Suddenly You Flare Again In My Sight A Wild Rose At The Edge Of The Thicket Where Yesterday There Was Only Shade And I Am Blessed And Choose Again, That Which I Chose Before.
Blessed
Heart
Wild Roses
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Believe
Awareness
Resources
We Have Lived Our Lives By The Assumption That What Was Good For Us Would Be Good For The World. We Have Been Wrong. We Must Change Our Lives So That It Will Be Possible To Live By The Contrary Assumption, That What Is Good For The World Will Be Good For Us. And That Requires That We Make The Effort To Know The World And Learn What Is Good For It.
Effort
Would Be
World
There Are Not Enough Rich And Powerful People To Consume The Whole World; For That, The Rich And Powerful Need The Help Of Countless Ordinary People.
Powerful
People
Ordinary
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Differences
Choices
Humanity
Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias. Say That Your Main Crop Is The Forest That You Did Not Plant, That You Will Not Live To Harvest.
Forests
Harvest
Plant
The Ability To Speak Exactly Is Intimately Related To The Ability To Know Exactly.
Exactly Is
Speak
Ability
He Never Complained. He Seemed To Have No Instinct For The Making Much Of Oneself That Complaining Requires.
Complaining
Instinct
Oneself
Charity Even For One Person Does Not Make Sense Except In Terms Of An Effort To Love All Creation In Response To The Creator's Love For It.
Effort
Doe
Charity
There Is No Sense And No Sanity In Objecting To The Desecration Of The Flag While Tolerating And Justifying And Encouraging As A Daily Business The Desecration Of The Country For Which It Stands.
Inspiring
Country
Flags
People Are Always Talking About The First Church. The Real First Church Was That Gaggle Of People Who Followed Jesus Around. We Don't Know Anything About Them. But He Apparently Didn't Ask Them What Creed They Subscribed To, Or What Their Sexual Preference Was, Or Any Of That. He Fed Them. He Healed Them. He Forgave Them. He Is Clear About Sin, But He Was Also For Forgiveness.
Jesus
Real
Talking
Our Destruction Of Nature Is Not Just Bad Stewardship, Or Stupid Economics, Or A Betrayal Of Family Responsibility; It Is The Most Horrid Blasphemy. It Is Flinging God's Gifts Into His Face, As If They Were Of No Worth Beyond That Assigned To Them By Our Destruction Of Them.
Betrayal
Stupid
Responsibility
I Take Literally The Statement In The Gospel Of John That God Loves The World. I Believe That The World Was Created And Approved By Love, That It Subsists, Coheres, And Endures By Love, And That, Insofar As It Is Redeemable, It Can Be Redeemed Only By Love. I Believe That Divine Love, Incarnate And Indwelling In The World, Summons The World Always Toward Wholeness, Which Ultimately Is Reconciliation And Atonement With God.
Believe
World
God Love
You Can't Know Where Life Will Take You, But You Can Commit To A Direction
Commit
Knows
Returning From The Wilderness A Man Becomes A Restorer Of Order, A Preserver. He Sees The Truth, Recognizes His True Heir, Honors His Forbears And His Heritage, And Gives His Blessing To His Successors. He Embodies The Passing Of Human Time, Living And Dying Within The Human Limits Of Grief And Joy.
Grief
Blessing
Men
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Dark
Garden
Light
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Sacred
Sacred Places
Gathering Places
Much Of Our Waste Problem Is To Be Accounted For By The Intentional Flimsiness And Unrepairability Of The Labor-savers And Gadgets That We Have Become Addicted To.
Addiction
Gadgets
Waste
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Love
Humble
Desire
In Order To Survive, A Plurality Of True Communities Would Require Not Egalitarianism And Tolerance But Knowledge, An Understanding Of The Necessity Of Local Differences, And Respect. Respect, I Think, Always Implies Imagination - The Ability To See One Another, Across Our Inevitable Differences, As Living Souls.
Thinking
Egalitarianism
Differences
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Men
Community
Progress
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Girl
Grief
Dark
Living Without Expectations Is Hard But, When You Can Do It, Good. Living Without Hope Is Harder, And That Is Bad. You Have Got To Have Hope, And You Must'nt Shirk It. Love, After All, Hopeth All Things. But Maybe You Must Learn, And It Is Hard Learning, Not To Hope Out Loud, Especially For Other People. You Must Not Let Your Hope Turn Into Expectation.
People
Expectations
Loud
We Walked Always In Beauty, It Seemed To Me. We Walked And Looked About, Or Stood And Looked. Sometimes, Less Often, We Would Sit Down. We Did Not Often Speak. The Place Spoke For Us And Was A Kind Of Speech. We Spoke To Each Other In The Things We Saw.
Saws
Speech
Kind
The Two Ideas, Justice And Vocation, Are Inseparable.... It Is By Way Of The Principle And Practice Of Vocation That Sanctity And Reverence Enter Into The Human Economy. It Was Thus Possible For Traditional Cultures To Conceive That "to Work Is To Pray." (pg. 258, The Idea Of A Local Economy)
Practice
Ideas
Two
A Teacher's Major Contribution May Pop Out Anonymously In The Life Of Some Ex-student's Grandchild. A Teacher, Finally, Has Nothing To Go On But Faith, A Student Nothing To Offer In Return But Testimony.
Faith
Teacher
Grandchildren
There Are Moments When The Heart Is Generous, And Then It Knows That For Better Or Worse Our Lives Are Woven Together Here, One With One Another And With The Place And All The Living Things.
Heart
Together
Woven
At Night Make Me One With The Darkness In The Morning Make Me One With The Light.
Morning
Night
Light
Protest That Endures, I Think, Is Moved By A Hope Far More Modest Than That Of Public Success: Namely, The Hope Of Preserving Qualities In One's Own Heart And Spirit That Would Be Destroyed By Acquiescence.
Freedom
Heart
Thinking
The Passive American Consumer, Sitting Down To A Meal Of Pre-prepared Food, Confronts Inert, Anonymous Substances That Have Been Processed, Dyed, Breaded, Sauced, Gravied, Ground, Pulped, Strained, Blended, Prettified, And Sanitized Beyond Resemblance To Any Part Of Any Creature That Ever Lived. The Products Of Nature And Agriculture Have Been Made, To All Appearances, The Products Of Industry. Both Eater And Eaten Are Thus In Exile From Biological Reality.
Inspiring
Reality
Agriculture
The Chance You Had Is The Life You've Got. You Can Make Complaints About What People, Including You, Make Of Their Lives After They Have Got Them, And About What People Make Of Other People's Lives, ...but You Mustn't Wish For Another Life. You Mustn't Want To Be Somebody Else.
People
Wish
Want
Violence Breeds Violence. Acts Of Violence Committed In "justice" Or In Affirmation Of "rights" Or In Defense Of "peace" Do Not End Violence. They Prepare And Justify Its Continuation.
Rights
Justice
Defense
The Fertility Cycle Is A Cycle Entirely Of Living Creatures Passing Again And Again Through Birth, Growth, Maturity, Death, And Decay.
Maturity
Growth
Decay
As Industrial Technology Advances And Enlarges, And In The Process Assumes Greater Social, Economic, And Political Force, It Carries People Away From Where They Belong By History, Culture, Deeds, Association, And Affection.
Technology
People
Political
A Teacher's Major Contribution May Pop Out Anonymuosly In The Life Of Some Ex-student's Grandchild.
Teacher
Grandchildren
May
Akin To The Idea That Time Is Money Is The Concept, Less Spoken But As Commonly Assumed, That We May Be Adequately Represented By Money. The Giving Of Money Has Thus Become Our Characteristic Virtue. But To Give Is Not To Do. The Money Is Given In Lieu Of Action, Thought, Care, Time.
Ideas
Giving
Care
The Problems Are Our Lives. In The "developed" Countries, At Least, The Large Problems Occur Because All Of Us Are Living Either Partly Wrong Or Almost Entirely Wrong. It Was Not Just The Greed Of Corporate Shareholders And The Hubris Of Corporate Executives That Put The Fate Of Prince William Sound Into One Ship; It Was Also Our Demand That Energy Be Cheap And Plentiful.
Country
Fate
Greed
Far From Making Peace, Wars Invariably Serve As Classrooms And Laboratories Where Men And Techniques And States Of Mind Are Prepared For The Next War.
War
Men
Mind
If A Healthy Soil Is Full Of Death, It Is Also Full Of Life: Worms, Fungi, Microorganisms Of All Kinds ... Given Only The Health Of The Soil, Nothing That Dies Is Dead For Very Long.
Life
Death
Long
Monsanto Doesn't Care About Feeding The World. We Have To Think About The Wage Slavery Of Migrant Workers And Salary Slavery Of Those Who Are Desperately Unhappy.
Freedom
Thinking
Unhappy
The Soil Under The Grass Is Dreaming Of A Young Forest, And Under The Pavement The Soil Is Dreaming Of Grass.
Dream
Pavement
Soil
Community, Then, Is An Indispensable Term In Any Discussion Of The Connection Between People And Land. A Healthy Community Is A Form That Includes All The Local Things That Are Connected By The Larger, Ultimately Mysterious Form Of The Creation. In Speaking Of Community, Then, We Are Speaking Of A Complex Connection Not Only Among Human Beings Or Between Humans And Their Homeland But Also Between Human Economy And Nature, Between Forest Or Prairie And Field Or Orchard, And Between Troublesome Creatures And Pleasant Ones. All Neighbors Are Included.
Land
People
Community
So, Friends, Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute. Love The Lord. Love The World. Work For Nothing. Take All That You Have And Be Poor. Love Someone Who Does Not Deserve It. Denounce The Government And Embrace The Flag. Hope To Live In That Free Republic For Which It Stands.
Government
Simplicity
Doe
How Do We Submit? By Not Being Radical Enough. Or By Not Being Thorough Enough, Which Is The Same Thing.
Enough
Thorough
Radical
We Need To Confront Honestly The Issue Of Scale... You May Need A Large Corporation To Run An Airline Or To Manufacture Cars, But You Don't Need A Large Corporation To Raise A Chicken Or A Hog. You Don't Need A Large Corporation To Process Local Food Or Local Timber And Market It Locally.
Running
Issues
Car
The Surface Of The Quieted River, As I Think Now, Is Like A Window Looking Into Another World That Is Like This One Except That It Is Quiet. Its Quietness Makes It Seem Perfect. The Ripples Are Like The Slates Of A Blind Of A Shutter Through Which We See Imperfectly What Is Perfect. Though That Other World Can Be Seen Only Momentarily, It Looks Everlasting. As The Ripples Become More Agitated, The Window Darkens And The Other World Is Hidden.the Surface Of The River Is Like A Living Soul, Which Is Easy To Disturb, Is Often Disturbed, But, Growing Calm, Shows What It Was, Is, And Will Be.
Thinking
Other Worlds
Rivers
Battle With Unconditioned Breath The Unconditioned Air. Shun Electric Wire. Communicate Slowly. Live A Three-dimensional Life; Stay Away From Screens.
Air
Battle
Wire
The Life We Want Is Not Merely The One We Have Chosen And Made. It Is The One We Must Be Choosing And Making
Want
Made
Chosen
To Be Well Used, Creatures And Places Must Be Used Sympathetically, Just As They Must Be Known Sympathetically To Be Well Known...the "animal Scientist" To Whom It Is Of No Concern Whether Or Not Animals Suffer Will Almost Inevitably Aid And Abet The Destruction Of The Decent Old Ideal Of Animal Husbandry And, As A Consequence, Increase The Suffering Of Animals. I Hope That My Country May Be Delivered From The Remote, Cold Abstractions Of University Science.
Country
Animal
Pet
We Are Living In The Most Destructive And, Hence, The Most Stupid Period Of The History Of Our Species.
Stupid
Periods
Species
At The Window He Sits And Looks Out, Musing On The River, A Little Brown Hen Duck Paddling Upstream Among The Windwaves Close To The Far Bank. What He Has Understood Lies Behind Him Like A Road In The Woods. He Is A Wilderness Looking Out At The Wild.
Lying
Rivers
Ducks
A Proper Community, We Should Remember Also, Is A Commonwealth: A Place, A Resource, An Economy. It Answers The Needs, Practical As Well As Social And Spiritual, Of Its Members - Among Them The Need To Need One Another. The Answer To The Present Alignment Of Political Power With Wealth Is The Restoration Of The Identity Of Community And Economy. (pg. 63, "racism And The Economy")
Spiritual
Racism
Community
The 'environmental Crisis' Has Happened Because The Human Household Or Economy Is In Conflict At Almost Every Point With The Household Of Nature. We Have Built Our Household On The Assumption That The Natural Household Is Simple And Can Be Simply Used. We Have Assumed Increasingly Over The Last Five Hundred Years That Nature Is Merely A Supply Of 'raw Materials,' And That We May Safely Possess Those Materials By Taking Them.... And So We Will Be Wrong If We Attempt To Correct What We Perceive As 'environmental' Problems Without Correcting The Economic Oversimplification That Caused Them.
Inspiring
Simple
Years
There Is Change By Necessity Or Adaptation, And There Is Contrived Change Or Novelty.
Novelty
Internet
Adaptation
If You Eat, You Are Involved In Agriculture.
Agriculture
Involved
Ifs
It's Mighty Hard Right Now To Think Of Anything That's Precious That Isn't Endangered. There Are No Sacred And Unsacred Places; There Are Only Sacred And Desecrated Places. My Belief Is That The World And Our Life In It Are Conditional Gifts.
Thinking
Sacred
World
A Sustainable Agriculture Is One Which Depletes Neither The People Nor The Land.
Land
Agriculture
People
When Going Back Makes Sense, You Are Going Ahead.
Make Sense
It's Kind Of Alarming For Me To Realize That, When I'm Writing Stories About Times I Remember, It's Already Historical Fiction.
Writing
Historical
Fiction
Laugh. Laughter Is Immeasurable. Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All The Facts.
Laughter
Laughing
Facts
And In Some Of The People Of The Town And Community Surrounding It, One Of The Characteristic Diseases Of The Twentieth Century Was Making Its Way: The Suspicion That They Would Be Greatly Improved If They Were Somewhere Else.
Somewhere Else
People
Community
The Answers To The Human Problems Of Ecology Are To Be Found In Economy. And The Answers To The Problems Of Economy Are To Be Found In Culture And Character. To Fail To See This Is To Go On Dividing The World Falsely Between Guilty Producers And Innocent Consumers.
Character
Culture
Answers
The Connections Between People And Land Are Dangerously Oversimplified And Mainly Technological.
Land
People
Connections
To Work Without Pleasure Or Affection, To Make A Product That Is Not Both Useful And Beautiful, Is To Dishonor God, Nature, The Thing That Is Made, And Whomever It Is Made For.
Beautiful
Affection
Pleasure
During The Last 17 Years... I Have Been Working At The Restoration Of A Once Exhausted Hillside. Its Scars Are Now Healed Over, Though Still Visible, And This Year It Has Provided Abundant Pasture, More Than In Any Year Since We Have Owned It. But To Make It As Good As It Is Now Has Taken 17 Years. If I Had Been A Millionaire Or If My Family Had Been Starving, It Would Still Have Taken 17 Years. It Can Be Better Than It Is Now, But That Will Take Longer. For It To Live Fully In Its Own Responsibility, As It Did Before Bad Use Ran It Down, May Take Hundreds Of Years.
Taken
Responsibility
Years
People Who Blame The Bible For The Modern Destruction Of Nature Have Failed To See Its Delight In The Variety And Individuality Of Creatures And Its Insistence Upon Their Holiness. But That Delight-in, Say, The Final Chapters Of Job Or The 104th Psalm-is Far More Useful To The Cause Of Conservation Than The Undifferentiating Abstractions Of Science... Reverence Gives Standing To Creatures, And To Our Perception Of Them, Just As The Law Gives Standing To A Citizen.
Jobs
Animal
Law
It Is Understood That Nonhuman Creatures Adapt To Their Places Or They Don't Live. And For Some Reason That I Can't Figure Out, Even The Biologists Have Excused Our Own Species From That Obligation. I Think There's Going To Be A Biological Penalty To Be Paid For That Eventually.
Thinking
Reason
Figures
It Is Possible, I Think, To Say That... A Christian Agriculture [is] Formed Upon The Understanding That It Is Sinful For People To Misuse Or Destroy What They Did Not Make. The Creation Is A Unique, Irreplaceable Gift, Therefore To Be Used With Humility, Respect, And Skill.
Christian
Humility
Unique
They Will Grow, Deliver, And Cook Your Food For You And (just Like Your Mother) Beg You To Eat It. That They Do Not Yet Offer To Insert It, Pre-chewed, Into Your Mouth Is Only Because They Have Found No Profitable Way To Do So.
Mother
Way
Mouths
If, On The Other Hand, Conservationists Are Willing To Insist On Having The Best Food, Produced In The Best Way, As Close To Their Homes As Possible, And If They Are Willing To Learn To Judge The Quality Of Food And Food Production, Then They Are Going To Give Economic Support To An Entirely Different Kind Of Land Use In An Entirely Different Landscape. This Landscape Will Have A Higher Ratio Of Caretakers To Acres, Of Care To Use. It Will Be At Once More Domestic And More Wild Than The Industrial Landscape.
Home
Land Use
Hands
Without A Complex Knowledge Of One's Place And Without The Faithfulness To One's Place On Which Such Knowledge Depends, It Is Inevitable That The Place Will Be Used Carelessly, And Eventually Destroyed. Without Such Knowledge And Faithfulness, Moreover, The Culture Of A Country Will Be Superficial And Decorative, Functional Only Insofar As It May Be A Symbol Of Prestige, The Affectation Of An Elite Or "in" Group.
Country
May
Groups
To Defend What We Love We Need A Particularizing Language, For We Love What We Particularly Know.
Needs
Language
Knows
That We Should Have An Agriculture Based As Much On Petroleum As The Soil-that We Need Petroleum Exactly As Much As We Need Food And Must Have It Before We Can Eat-may Seem Absurd. It Is Absurd. It Is Nevertheless True.
Should Have
Land
Agriculture
The Language That Reveals Also Obscures.
Language
No Wonder So Many Sermons Are Devoted Exclusively To "spiritual" Subjects. If One Is Living By The Tithes Of History's Most Destructive Economy, Then The Disembodiment Of The Soul Becomes The Chief Of Worldly Conveniences.
Spiritual
Soul
Wonder
I Prayed Like A Man Walking In A Forest At Night, Feeling His Way With His Hands, At Each Step Fearing To Fall Into Pure Bottomlessness Forever. Prayer Is Like Lying Awake At Night, Afraid, With Your Head Under The Cover, Hearing Only The Beating Of Your Own Heart.
Prayer
Lying
Fall
Always In The Big Woods When You Leave Familiar Ground And Step Off Alone Into A New Place There Will Be, Along With The Feelings Of Curiosity And Excitement, A Little Nagging Of Dread. It Is The Ancient Fear Of The Unknown, And It Is Your First Bond With The Wilderness You Are Going Into.
Challenges
Feelings
Risk
There Comes . . . A Longing Never To Travel Again Except On Foot.
Journey
Feet
Hiking
It Is To Be Broken. It Is To Be Torn Open. It Is Not To Be Reached And Come To Rest In Ever. I Turn Against You, I Break From You, I Turn To You. We Hurt, And Are Hurt, And Have Each Other For Healing. It Is Healing. It Is Never Whole.
Hurt
Healing
Broken
We Learn From Our Gardens To Deal With The Most Urgent Question Of The Time: How Much Is Enough?
Time
Learning
Garden
We Cannot Comprehend What Comprehends Us.
Comprehension
For Complex Reasons, Our Culture Allows "economy" To Mean Only "money Economy." It Equates Success And Even Goodness With Monetary Profit Because It Lacks Any Other Standard Of Measurement. I Am No Economist, But I Venture To Suggest That One Of The Laws Of Such An Economy Is That A Farmer Is Worth More Dead Than Alive. A Second Law Is That Anything Diseased Is More Profitable Than Anything That Is Healthy. What Is Wrong With Us Contributes More To The "gross National Product" Than What Is Right With Us.
Success
Mean
Law
A Man's Life Is Always Dealing With Permanence, That Is The Most Dangerous Kind Of Irresponsibility Is To Think Of Your Doings As Temporary.
Men
Thinking
Kind
It Gets Darker And Darker And Darker, And Then Jesus Is Born.
Jesus
Born
To Cherish What Remains Of The Earth And To Foster Its Renewal Is Our Only Legitimate Hope Of Survival.
Nature
Garden
Earth Day
An Agrarian Mind Begins With The Love Of Fields And Ramifies In Good Farming, Good Cooking & Good Eating
Cooking
Mind
Fields
Only By Restoring The Broken Connections Can We Be Healed. Connection Is Health.
Broken
Connections
Interdependence
It Is A Horrible Fact That We Can Read In The Daily Paper, Without Interrupting Our Breakfast, Numerical Reckonings Of Death And Destruction That Ought To Break Our Hearts Or Scare Us Out Of Our Wits.
Heart
Scare
Paper
You Can't Live Entirely Alone. You Have To Have Some Kind Of A Support System.
Support Systems
Support
Kind
So Friends, Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute.
Simplicity
I Dream Of A Quiet Man / Who Explains Nothing And Defends Nothing, But Only Knows / Where The Rarest Wildflowers / Are Blooming, And Who Goes, / And Finds That He Is Smiling / Not By His Own Will.
Dream
Men
Wildflowers
The Consumer Wants Food To Be As Cheap As Possible. The Producer Wants It To Be As Expensive As Possible. Both Want It To Involve As Little Labor As Possible. And So The Standards Of Cheapness And Convenience, Which Are Irresistibly Simplifying And Therefore Inevitably Exploitive, Have Been Substituted For The Standard Of Health (of Both People And Land), Which Would Enforce Consideration Of Essential Complexities.
Land
People
Essentials
An Art That Heals And Protects Its Subject Is A Geography Of Scars.
Art
Scar
Geography
Reverence Makes It Possible To Be Whole, Though Ignorant. It Is The Wholeness Of Understanding.
Respect
Understanding
Ignorant
It Is Easy For Me To Imagine That The Next Great Division Of The World Will Be Between People Who Wish To Live As Creatures And People Who Wish To Live As Machines.
People
Wish
Division
I Am Speaking Of The Life Of A Man Who Knows That The World Is Not Given By His Fathers, But Borrowed From His Children; Who Has Undertaken To Cherish It And Do It No Damage, Not Because He Is Duty-bound, But Because He Loves The World And Loves His Children...
Nature
Children
Father
The Most Available Example Of How Poetry Works For A Poet Is Yourself, And Yet You'll Probably Be The Last One To Know Exactly How You're Serving The Art And How The Art Is Serving You.
Art
Example
Lasts
No Matter How Much One May Love The World As A Whole, One Can Live Fully In It Only By Living Responsibly In Some Small Part Of It. Where We Live And Who We Live There With Define The Terms Of Our Relationship To The World And To Humanity. We Thus Come Again To The Paradox That One Can Become Whole Only By The Responsible Acceptance Of One's Partiality.
Acceptance
Humanity
World
Especially Among Christians In Positions Of Wealth And Power, The Idea Of Reading The Gospels And Keeping Jesus' Commandments As Stated Therein Has Been Replaced By A Curious Process Of Logic. According To This Process, People First Declare Themselves To Be Followers Of Christ, And Then They Assume That Whatever They Say Or Do Merits The Adjective "christian".
Christian
Jesus
Reading
We Clasp The Hands Of Those Who Go Before Us.
Hands
Praise Ignorance, For What Man Has Not Encountered He Has Not Destroyed.
Ignorance
Men
Praise
Physical Health Doesn't Exist Apart From The Health Of Other Things. Health Ultimately Involves The Community, And The Community Ultimately Involves The Place And Natural Life Of That Place, So That Real Health Is Harmony With The World.
Real
Community
World
A Man Who Does Not Ask To Much Become The Promise Of His Land. His Marriage Married To His Place, He Waits And Does Not Stray.
Men
Land
Waiting
Like The Water Of A Deep Stream, Love Is Always Too Much. We Did Not Make It. Though We Drink Till We Burst, We Cannot Have It All, Or Want It All. In Its Abundance It Survives Our Thirst. In The Evening We Come Down To The Shore To Drink Our Fill, And Sleep, While It Flows Through The Regions Of The Dark. It Does Not Hold Us, Except We Keep Returning To Its Rich Waters Thirsty. We Enter, Willing To Die, Into The Commonwealth Of Its Joy.
Sleep
Dark
Love Is
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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