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In This State Of Total Consumerism-which Is To Say A State Of Helpless Dependence On Things And Services And Ideas And Motives That We Have Forgotten How To Provide Ourselves-all Meaningful Contact Between Ourselves And The Earth Is Broken. We Do Not Understand The Earth In Terms Either Of What It Offers Us Or Of What It Requires Of Us, And I Think It Is The Rule That People Inevitably Destroy What They Do Not Understand.
-Wendell Berry
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In This State Of

Wendell Berry
In This State Of Total Consumerism-which Is To Say A State Of Helpless Dependence On Things And Services And Ideas And Motives That We Have Forgotten How To Provide Ourselves-all Meaningful Contact Between Ourselves And The Earth Is Broken. We Do Not Understand The Earth In Terms Either Of What It Offers Us Or Of What It Requires Of Us, And I Think It Is The Rule That People Inevitably Destroy What They Do Not Understand.
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The Connections Between People And Land Are Dangerously Oversimplified And Mainly Technological.
Land
People
Connections
Analogies Have Tied Things Together For Me, Personally. The Fundamental One For Me Is The Analogy Between Your Relationship To Your Spouse And Your Relationship To Your Place. Both Need To Be A Settled Commitment And Both Involve Continuous Learning And Adjusting.
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All Goes Back To The Earth, And So I Do Not Desire Pride Of Excess Or Power, But The Contentments Made By Men Who Have Had Little: The Fisherman's Silence Receiving The River's Grace, The Gardener's Musing On Rows.
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For Want Of A Pilate Of Their Own, Some Christians Would Accept A Constantine Or Whomever Might Be The Current Incarnation Of Caesar.
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To Be Patient In An Emergency Is A Terrible Trial.
Trials
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He Never Complained. He Seemed To Have No Instinct For The Making Much Of Oneself That Complaining Requires.
Complaining
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If I Was Freer Than I Had Ever Been In My Life, I Was Not Yet Entirely Free, For I Still Hung On To An Idea That Had Been Set Deep In Me By All My Schooling So Far: I Was A Bright Boy And I Ought To Make Something Out Of Myself... Something Else That Would Be A Cut Or Two Above My Humble Origins.
Humble
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Obviously, If Christianity Is Going To Survive As More Than A Respecter And Comforter Of Profitable Inquiries, Then Christians, Regardless Of Their Organizations, Are Going To Have To Interest Themselves In Economy-which Is To Say, In Nature And In Work. They Are Going To Have To Give Workable Answers To Those Who Say We Cannot Live Without This Economy That Is Destroying Us And Our World, Who See The Murder Of Creation As The Only Way Of Life.
Christian
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Men May Dam It And Say That They Have Made A Lake, But It Will Still Be A River. It Will Keep Its Nature And Bide Its Time, Like A Caged Animal Alert For The Slightest Opening. In Time, It Will Have Its Way; The Dam, Like The Ancient Cliffs, Will Be Carried Away Piecemeal In The Currents.
Animal
Men
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A Farmer's Market Is Worth More Than Everything I've Written.
Family
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Some Of The Best Things I Have Ever Thought Of I Have Thought Of During Bad Sermons.
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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
To Be Interested In Food But Not In Food Production Is Clearly Absurd.
Absurd
Food Production
Productions
The Captains Of Industry Have Always Counseled The Rest Of Us "to Be Realistic." Let Us, Therefore, Be Realistic. Is It Realistic To Assume That The Present Economy Would Be Just Fine If Only It Would Stop Poisoning The Air And Water, Or If Only It Would Stop Soil Erosion, Or If Only It Would Stop Degrading Watersheds And Forest Ecosystems, Or If Only It Would Stop Seducing Children, Or If Only It Would Stop Buying Politicians, Or If Only It Would Give Women And Favored Minorities An Equitable Share Of The Loot?
Children
Air
Ecosystems
You Mustn’t Wish For Another Life. You Mustn’t Want To Be Somebody Else. What You Must Do Is This: “rejoice Evermore. Pray Without Ceasing. In Everything Give Thanks.” I Am Not All The Way Capable Of So Much, But Those Are The Right Instructions.
Giving
Wish
Way
A Community Is The Mental And Spiritual Condition Of Knowing That The Place Is Shared, And That The People Who Share The Place Define And Limit The Possibilities Of Each Other's Lives. It Is The Knowledge That People Have Of Each Other, Their Concern For Each Other, Their Trust In Each Other, The Freedom With Which They Come And Go Among Themselves.
Spiritual
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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
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We Are Living Even Now Among Punishments And Ruins.
Punishment
Ruins
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
The Assumption Is That People So Ignorant And Thoughtless And Silly And Greedy May Simply Call Upon The Army Corps Of Engineers In Order To Receive A Clean And Abundant Supply Of Water From Reservoirs In The Mountains. A Much Likelier Outcome Is That They Will Be Drinking An Ever Stronger Mixture Of Sewage And Mine Acid And Mud And Cropspray And Various Other Defecations Of The Industrial Paradise.
Drinking
Silly
Army
As Long As We Insist On Relating To It Strictly On Our Own Terms-as Strange To Us Or Subject To Us-the Wilderness Is Alien, Threatening, Fearful.
Long
Strange
Aliens
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
Be Joyful Because It Is Humanly Possible.
Joyful
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
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
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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)
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But In Fact As Knowledge Expands Globally It Is Being Lost Locally. This Is The Paramount Truth Of The Modern History Of Rural Places Everywhere In The World. And It Is The Gravest Problem Of Land Use: Modern Humans Typically Are Using Places Whose Nature They Have Never Known And Whose History They Have Forgotten; Thus Ignorant, They Almost Necessarily Abuse What They Use.
Land
Abuse
Ignorant
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. Say That The Leaves Are Harvested When They Have Rotted Into The Mold. Call That Profit. Prophesy Such Returns. Put Your Faith In The Two Inches Of Humus That Will Build Under The Trees Every Thousand Years.
Two
Years
Tree
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
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
What Leads To Peace Is Not Violence But Peaceableness, Which Is Not Passivity, But An Alert, Informed, Practiced, And Active State Of Being.
Violence
States
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If The Devil Doesn't Exist... How Do You Explain That Some People Are A Lot Worse Than They're Smart Enough To Be?
Smart
People
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To Treat Life As Less Than A Miracle Is To Give Up On It.
Life
Giving Up
Miracle
To Husband Is To Use With Care, To Keep, To Save, To Make Last, To Conserve. Old Usage Tells Us That There Is A Husbandry Also Of The Land, Of The Soil, Of The Domestic Plants And Animals. And So It Appears That Most And Perhaps All Of Industrial Agriculture's Manifest Failures Are The Result Of An Attempt To Make The Land Produce Without Husbandry.
Husband
Animal
Land
You Have Been Given Questions To Which You Cannot Be Given Answers. You Will Have To Live Them Out - Perhaps A Little At A Time.' And How Long Is That Going To Take?' I Don't Know. As Long As You Live, Perhaps.' That Could Be A Long Time.' I Will Tell You A Further Mystery,' He Said. 'it May Take Longer.
Long
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May
So, Friends, Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute...give Your Approval To All You Cannot Understand...ask The Questions That Have No Answers. Put Your Faith In Two Inches Of Humus That Will Build Under The Trees Every Thousand Years...laugh. Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All The Facts....practice Resurrection.
Years
Practice
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The Incarnate Word Is With Us, Is Still Speaking, Is Present Always, Yet Leaves No Sign But Everything That Is.
Garden
Stills
I'd Rather Rely On Mother Nature's Wisdom Than Man's Cleverness
Mother
Men
Cleverness
I Think Of The Old Slavery, And Of The Way The Economy Has Now Improved Upon It. The New Slavery Has Improved Upon The Old By Giving The New Slaves The Illusion That They Are Free. The Economy Does Not Take People's Freedom By Force, Which Would Be Against Its Principles, For It Is Very Humane. It Buys Their Freedom, Pays For It, And Then Persuades Its Money Back Again With Shoddy Goods And The Promise Of Freedom. "buy A Car," It Says, "and Be Free. Buy A Boat And Be Free." Is This Not The Raw Material Of Bad Dreams? Or Is It Maybe The Very Nightmare Itself?
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Thinking
People
Sometimes I Knew In All My Mind And Heart Why I Had Done What I Had Done, And I Welcomed The Sacrifice. But There Were Times Too When I Lived In A Desert And Felt No Joy And Saw No Hope And Could Not Remember My Old Feelings. Then I Lived By Faith Alone, Faith Without Hope. What Good Did I Get From It? I Got To Have Love In My Heart.
Heart
Sacrifice
Joy
And I Knew That The Spirit That Had Gone Forth To Shape The World And Make It Live Was Still Alive In It. I Just Had No Doubt. I Could See That I Lived In The Created World, And It Was Still Being Created. I Would Be Part Of It Forever. There Was No Escape. The Spirit That Made It Was In It, Shaping It And Reshaping It, Sometimes Lying At Rest, Sometimes Standing Up And Shaking Itself, Like A Muddy Horse, And Letting The Pieces Fly.
Horse
Lying
Forever
These Are People Who Are Capable Of Devotion, Public Devotion, To Justice. They Meant What They Said And Every Day That Passes, They Mean It More.
Mean
People
Justice
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
As I Understand It, I Am Being Paid Only For My Work In Arranging The Words; My Property Is That Arrangement. The Thoughts In This Book, On The Contrary, Are Not Mine. They Came Freely To Me, And I Give Them Freely Away. I Have No "intellectual Property," And I Think That All Claimants To Such Property Are Theives.
Book
Thinking
Giving
The Shoddy Work Of Despair, The Pointless Work Of Pride, Equally Betray Creation. They Are Wastes Of Life.
Pride
Despair
Waste
The Question Before Me, Now That I Am Old, Is Not How To Be Dead, Which I Know From Enough Practice, But How To Be Alive, As These Worn Hills Still Tell, And Some Paintings Of Paul Cezanne, And This Mere Singing Wren, Who Thinks He's Alive Forever, This Instant, And May Be.
Thinking
Practice
Forever
Only By Restoring The Broken Connections Can We Be Healed. Connection Is Health.
Broken
Connections
Interdependence
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
People Are Fed By The Food Industry, Which Pays No Attention To Health, And Are Treated By The Health Industry, Which Pays No Attention To Food.
Inspiring
People
Attention
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
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
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.
Prayer
Rain
Rocks
And If We Ask What Are The Cultural Resources That Can Inform And Sustain A Proper Creaturely And Stewardly Awareness Of The Lives In A Farmer's Keeping, I Believe That We Will Find Them Gathered Under The Heading Of Husbandry.
Believe
Awareness
Resources
And The World Cannot Be Discovered By A Journey Of Miles, No Matter How Long, But Only By A Spiritual Journey, A Journey Of One Inch, Very Arduous And Humbling And Joyful, By Which We Arrive At The Ground At Our Own Feet, And Learn To Be At Home.
Spiritual
Home
Journey
One Cannot Be Aware Both Of The History Of Christian War And Of The Contents Of The Gospels Without Feeling That Something Is Amiss.
Christian
War
Feelings
To Be Sane In A Mad Time Is Bad For The Brain, Worse For The Heart.
Heart
Mad
Brain
You've Got To Reach Towards A Better Language, And You're Not Going To Make It Up From Scratch; You've Got To Reach Back Into The Tradition. Western Tradition Is Not As Impoverished As A Lot Of People Would Like To Think, But You'd Have To Go Back Before The Industrial Revolution; You May Have To Go Back Farther Than That. Of Course, The Bible Has A Perfectly Adequate Language, But It's Suffered A Lot Of Thoughtless Wear.
Thinking
People
Scratches
A Man With A Machine And Inadequate Culture Is A Pestilence.
Men
Culture
Machines
We Could Say That The Human Race Is A Great Coauthorship In Which We Are Collaborating With God And Nature In The Making Of Ourselves And One Another. From This There Is No Escape. We May Collaborate Either Well Or Poorly Or We May Refuse To Collaborate, But Even To Refuse To Collaborate Is To Exert An Influence And To Affect The Quality Of The Product. This Is Only A Way Of Saying That By Ourselves We Have No Meaning And No Dignity; By Ourselves We Are Outside The Human Definition, Outside Our Identity.
Nature
Race
Quality
The More Local And Settled A Culture, The Better It Stays Put, The Less The Damage. It Is The Foreigner Whose Road Of Excess Leads To A Desert... A Man With A Machine And Inadequate Culture... Is A Pestilence. He Shakes More Than He Can Hold.
Men
Pestilence
Damage
We Know Enough Of Our Own History By Now To Be Aware That People Exploit What They Have Merely Concluded To Be Of Value, But They Defend What They Love. To Defend What We Love We Need A Particularizing Language, For We Love What We Particularly Know.
Life
People
Needs
The Rule, Acknowledged Or Not, Seems To Be That If We Have Great Power We Must Use It. We Would Use A Steam Shovel To Pick Up A Dime. We Have Experts Who Can Prove There Is No Other Way To Do It.
Experts
Dimes
Use
If You're A Writer And You Are At All Inclined To Speak As A Christian In Some Way, You Realize Very Quickly That The Conventional Language Is Pretty Much Useless. It Takes A Long Time To Get Past That, Or It Has Taken Me A Long Time. People In Conventional Christianity Have Spoken Lightly And Sometimes Frivolously Of God For A Long Time. It's A Word That Needs To Be Used Sparingly, In My Opinion.
Christian
Taken
Past
To Love Anything Good, At Any Cost, Is A Bargain.
Cost
Bargains
How Do We Submit? By Not Being Radical Enough. Or By Not Being Thorough Enough, Which Is The Same Thing.
Enough
Thorough
Radical
We Are Going To Have To Gather Up The Fragments Of Knowledge And Responsibilities That Have Been Turned Over To Governments, Corporations, And Specialists, And Put Those Fragments Back Together Again In Our Own Minds And In Our Families And Household And Neighborhoods.
Responsibility
Government
Together Again
We Can Say Without Exaggeration That The Present National Ambition Of The United States Is Unemployment. People Live For Quitting Time, For Weekends, For Vacations, And For Retirement; Moreover, This Ambition Seems To Be Classless, As True In The Executive Suites As On The Assembly Lines. One Works Not Because The Work Is Necessary, Valuable, Useful To A Desirable End, Or Because One Loves To Do It, But Only To Be Able To Quit - A Condition That A Saner Time Would Regard As Infernal, A Condemnation.
Retirement
Ambition
Weekend
We Have Made It Our Overriding Ambition To Escape Work, And As A Consequence Have Debased Work Until It Is Only Fit To Escape From. We Have Debased The Products Of Work And Have Been, In Turn, Debased By Them. (pg. 43, "the Unsettling Of America")
Ambition
America
Fit
It Is No More Possible To Live In The Future Than It Is To Live In The Past. If Life Is Not Now, It Is Never.
Past
Life Is
Ifs
Education In The True Sense, Of Course, Is An Enablement To Serve-both The Living Human Community In Its Natural Household Or Neighborhood And The Precious Cultural Possessions That The Living Community Inherits Or Should Inherit.
Community
Natural
Should
And So There Would Always Be More To Remember That Could No Longer Be Seen...our History Is Always Returning To A Little Patch Of Weeds And Saplings With An Old Chimney Sticking Up By Itself...and Here I Look Ahead To The Resting Of My Case: I Love The House That Belonged To The Chimney, Holding It Bright In Memory, And Love The Saplings And The Weeds.
Weed
Memories
House
The Industrial Mind Is A Mind Without Compunction; It Simply Accepts That People, Ultimately, Will Be Treated As Things And That Things, Ultimately, Will Be Treated As Garbage. (a Defense Of The Family Farm, 1986)
People
Mind
Defense
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
I Have This Love For Mattie. It Was Formed In Me As He Himself Was Formed. It Has His Shape, You Might Say. He Fits It. He Fits Into It As He Fits Into His Clothes. He Will Always Fit Into It. When He Gets Out Of The Car And I Meet Him And Hug Him, There He Is, Him Himself, Something Of My Very Own Forever, And My Love For Him Goes All Around Him Just As It Did When He Was A Baby And A Little Boy And A Young Man Grown.
Baby
Boys
Men
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.
Country
Made
Concrete
To Defend What We Love We Need A Particularizing Language, For We Love What We Particularly Know.
Needs
Language
Knows
Praise Ignorance, For What Man Has Not Encountered He Has Not Destroyed.
Ignorance
Men
Praise
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.
Country
Sex
Animal
One Of The Most Important Resources That A Garden Makes Available For Use, Is The Gardener's Own Body. A Garden Gives The Body The Dignity Of Working In Its Own Support. It Is A Way Of Rejoining The Human Race.
Nature
Garden
Race
American Agriculture Is Badly In Need Of Diversity. Another Threat To The Food System Of Course Is The Likelihood That Petroleum Is Not Going To Get Any Cheaper.
Agriculture
Diversity
Needs
When You Are New At Sheep-raising And Your Ewe Has A Lamb, Your Impulse Is To Stay There And Help It Nurse And See To It And All. After A While You Know That The Best Thing You Can Do Is Walk Out Of The Barn.
Sheep
Nurse
Barns
We Clasp The Hands Of Those Who Go Before Us, And The Hands Of Those Who Come After Us; We Enter The Little Circle Of Each Other's Arms, And The Larger Circle Of Lovers Whose Hands Are Joined In A Dance, And The Larger Circle Of All Creatures, Passing In And Out Of Life, Who Move Also In A Dance, To A Music So Subtle And Vast That No Ear Hears It Except In Fragments.
Moving
Hands
Circles
If We Do Not Serve What Coheres And Endures, We Serve What Disintegrates And Destroys.
Environmental
Sustainability
Endure
You Can Best Serve Civilization By Being Against What Usually Passes For It.
Civilization
It Is, Of Course, One Of The Miracles Of Science That The Germs That Used To Be In Our Food Have Been Replaced By Poisons.
Miracle
Germs
Poison
... It Is Not A Crisis Of Our Environs Or Surroundings; It Is A Crisis Of Our Lives As Individuals, As Family Members, As Community Members, And As Citizens. We Have An 'environmental Crisis' Because We Have Consented To An Economy In Which By Eating, Drinking, Working, Resting, Traveling, And Enjoying Ourselves We Are Destroying The Natural, God-given World.
Drinking
Community
Environmental
The Earth Is What We All Have In Common.
Nature
Earth Day
Environmental
A Sustainable Agriculture Does Not Deplete Soils Or People.
Agriculture
People
Doe
But Love, Sooner Or Later, Forces Us Out Of Time...of All That We Feel And Do, All The Virtues And All The Sins, Love Alone Crowds Us At Last Over The Edge Of The World. For Love Is Always More Than A Little Strange Here...it Is In The World, But Is Not Altogether Of It. It Is Of Eternity. It Takes Us There When It Most Holds Us Here.
Love Is
World
Crowds
When Despair For The World Grows In Me... I Come Into The Presence Of Still Water. And I Feel Above Me The Day-blind Stars Waiting With Their Light. For A Time I Rest In The Grace Of The World, And Am Free.
Stars
Light
Water
As Long As We Insist On Relating To It Strictly On Our Own Terms-as Strange To Us Or Subject To Us-the Wilderness Is Alien, Threatening, Fearful. We Have No Choice Then But To Become Its Exploiters, And To Lose, By Consequence, Our Place In It. It Is Only When, By Humility, Openness, Generosity, Courage, We Make Ourselves Able To Relate To It On Its Terms That It Ceases To Be Alien.
Humility
Long
Generosity
We Have Neglected The Truth That A Good Farmer Is A Craftsman Of The Highest Order, A Kind Of Artist.
Artist
Order
Kind
The Teachers Are Everywhere. What Is Wanted Is A Learner.
Teacher
Wanted
Learners
But In Its De Facto Alliance With Caesar, Christianity Connives Directly In The Murder Of Creation. For In These Days, Caesar Is No Longer A Mere Destroyer Of Armies, Cities, And Nations. He Is A Contradicter Of The Fundamental Miracle Of Life.
Army
Cities
Miracle
If You Can Read And Have More Imagination Than A Doorknob, What Need Do You Have For A 'movie Version' Of A Novel?
Imagination
Needs
Novel
We Do Need A 'new Economy,' But One That Is Founded On Thrift And Care, On Saving And Conserving, Not On Excess And Waste. An Economy Based On Waste Is Inherently And Hopelessly Violent, And War Is Its Inevitable By-product. We Need A Peaceable Economy.
Nature
War
Simplicity
One Of The Strongest Of Contemporary Conventions Is That Of Comparing To Thoreau Every Writer Who Has Been As Far Out Of The House As The Mailbox.
House
Conventions
Mailboxes
The Discussion About Food Doesn't Make Any Sense Without Discussion At The Same Time Of Land, Land Use, Land Policy, Fertility Maintenance, And Farm Infrastructure Maintenance.
Land
Maintenance
Use
If We Are To Have A Culture As Resilient And Competent In The Face Of Necessity As It Needs To Be, Then It Must Somehow Involve Within Itself A Ceremonious Generosity Toward The Wilderness Of Natural Force And Instinct. The Farm Must Yield A Place To The Forest, Not As A Wood Lot, Or Even As A Necessary Agricultural Principle But As A Sacred Grove - A Place Where The Creation Is Let Alone, To Serve As Instruction, Example, Refuge; A Place For People To Go, Free Of Work And Presumption, To Let Themselves Alone. (pg. 125, The Body And The Earth)
Yield
People
Generosity
Love Is What Carries You, For It Is Always There, Even In The Dark, Or Most In The Dark, But Shining Out At Times Like Gold Stitches In A Piece Of Embroidery.
Love
Dark
Shining
What Can't Be Helped Must Be Endured.
Beware The Machinery Of Longevity. When A Man's Life Is Over The Decent Thing Is For Him To Die. The Forest Does Not Withhold Itself From Death. What It Gives Up It Takes Back.
Giving Up
Men
Doe
The Line That Connects The Bombing Of Civilian Populations To The Mountain Removed By Strip Mining ... To The Tortured Prisoner Seems To Run Pretty Straight. We're Living, It Seems, In The Culmination Of A Long Warfare - Warfare Against Human Beings, Other Creatures And The Earth Itself.
Running
Long
Mountain
Action Can Only Be Understood In Relation To Place; Only By Staying In Place Can The Imagination Conceive Or Understand Action In Terms Of Consequence, Of Cause And Effect. The Meaning Of Action In Time Is Inseparable From Its Meaning In Place.
Imagination
Causes
Action
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
War
Ambition
Without Prosperous Local Economies, The People Have No Power And The Land No Voice.
Land
Voice
People
The Christian Gospel Is A Summons To Peace, Calling For Justice Beyond Anger, Mercy Beyond Justice, Forgiveness Beyond Mercy, Love Beyond Forgiveness.
Christian
Justice
Calling
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
Beauty . . . Cannot Be Interpreted. It Is Not An Empirically Verifiable Fact; It Is Not A Quantity.
Facts
Quantity
Don't Own So Much Clutter That You Will Be Relieved To See Your House Catch Fire.
Fire
House
Relieved
If In The Human Economy, A Squash In The Field Is Worth More Than A Bushel Of Soil, That Does Not Mean That Food Is More Valuable Than Soil; It Means Simply That We Do Not Know How To Value The Soil. In Its Complexity And Its Potential Longevity, The Soil Exceeds Our Comprehension; We Do Not Know How To Place A Just Market Value On It, And We Will Never Learn How. Its Value Is Inestimable; We Must Value It, Beyond Whatever Price We Put On It, By Respecting It.
Mean
Land
Squash
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
The Mind That Is Not Baffled, Is Unemployed
Mind
Baffled
Unemployed
The Form Of A Poem Is Invisible. A Poem Is Not An "object." This Is Hard To Accept In A Mechanical Age.
Age
Invisible
Accepting
What Would Be The Point Of Being Personally Whole In A Dismembered Society, Or Personally Healthy In A Land Scalped, Eroded And Poisoned, Or Personally Free In A World Entirely Controlled By The Government Or Enlightened By Television?
Government
Land
Healthy
There Are, It Seems, Two Muses: The Muse Of Inspiration, Who Gives Us Inarticulate Visions And Desires, And The Muse Of Realization, Who Returns Again And Again To Say, 'it Is Yet More Difficult Than You Thought.' It May Be That When We No Longer Know What To Do, We Have Come To Our Real Work And When We No Longer Know Which Way To Go, We Have Begun Our Real Journey.
Real
Inspiration
Journey
O Thou, Far Off And Here, Whole And Broken, Who In Necessity And In Bounty Wait, Whose Truth Is Light And Dark, Mute Though Spoken, By Thy Wide Grace Show Me Thy Narrow Gate.
Dark
Garden
Light
In Kentucky, We're Destroying Mountains, Including Their Soils And Forests, In Order To Get At The Coal. In Other Words, We're Destroying A Permanent Value In Order To Get At An Almost Inconceivably Transient Value. That Coal Has A Value Only If And When It Is Burnt. And After It Is Burnt, It Is A Pollutant And A Waste-a Burden.
Kentucky
Order
Ifs And
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
Hunger Is A Powerful Persuader If It Happens, And It's Conceivable That It Could Happen. Country People Have Always Known This.
Country
Powerful
People
Prayer Is Like Lying Awake At Night, Afraid, With Your Head Under The Cover, Hearing Only The Beating Of Your Own Heart. It Is Like A Bird That Has Blundered Down The Flue And Is Caught Indoors And Flutters At The Windowpanes. It Is Like Standing A Long Time On A Cold Day, Knocking At A Shut Door.
Prayer
Lying
Heart
The Acquisition Of Knowledge Always Involves The Revelation Of Ignorance-almost Is The Revelation Of Ignorance.
Ignorance
Knowledge
Acquisition
We Have Forgotten That Vietnam, And Iraq Resent Being Invaded And Know The Ground Better Than We Do.
Iraq
Vietnam
Forgotten
All We Can Do To Prepare Rightly For Tomorrow Is To Do The Right Thing Today.
Today
Tomorrow
Can Do
We Are Destroying Our Country - I Mean Our Country Itself, Our Land. This Is A Terrible Thing To Know, But It Is Not A Reason For Despair Unless We Decide To Continue The Destruction. If We Decide To Continue The Destruction, That Will Not Be Because We Have No Other Choice. This Destruction Is Not Necessary. It Is Not Inevitable, Except That By Our Submissiveness We Make It So.
Country
Mean
Land
The Grower Of Trees, The Gardener, The Man Born To Farming, Whose Hands Reach Into The Ground And Sprout, To Him The Soil Is A Divine Drug. He Enters Into Death Yearly, And Comes Back Rejoicing. He Has Seen The Light Lie Down In The Dung Heap, And Rise Again In The Corn.
Lying
Men
Garden
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.
Religious
Growth
Want
The Aim Of Industrialization Has Always Been To Replace People With Machines Or Other Technology, To Make The Cost Of Production As Low As Possible, To Sell The Product As High As Possible, And To Move The Wealth Into Fewer And Fewer Hands.
Moving
Technology
Hands
It Is Only By Understanding The Cultural Complexity And Largeness Of The Concept Of Agriculture That We Can See The Threatening Diminishments Implied By The Term 'agribusiness.'
Agriculture
Understanding
Agribusiness
I Could Die In Peace, I Think, If The World Was Beautiful. To Know It's Being Ruined Is Hard.
Beautiful
Thinking
World
Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer
Computer
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
There Are No Unsacred Places; There Are Only Sacred Places And Desecrated Places.
Sacred
Sacred Places
Gathering Places
Ask The Questions That Have No Answers. Invest In The Millenium. Plant Sequoias.
Answers
Plant
Asks
To Hear Of A Thousand Deaths In War Is Terrible, And We 'know' That It Is. But As It Registers On Our Hearts, It Is Not More Terrible Than One Death Fully Imagined.
War
Heart
Terrible
No Individual Life Is An End In Itself. One Can Live Fully Only By Participating Fully In The Succession Of The Generations, In Death As Well As In Life. Some Would Say (and I Am One Of Them) That We Can Live Fully Only By Making Ourselves Answerable To The Claims Of Eternity As To Those Of Time.
Environmental
Generations
Life Is
It Would Take Me Years Of Reading, Thought, And Experience To Learn Again That In This World Limits Are Not Only Inescapable But Indispensable.
Reading
Years
World
How Would You Describe The Difference Between Modern War And Modern Industry-between Say, Bombing And Strip Mining, Or Between Chemical Warfare And Chemical Manufacturing? The Difference Seems To Be Only That In War The Victimization Of Humans Is Directly Intentional And In Industry It Is "accepted" As A "trade-off." Were The Catastrophes Of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, And The Exxon Valdez Episodes Of War Or Of Peace? They Were In Fact, Peacetime Acts Of Aggression, Intentional To The Extent That The Risks Were Known And Ignored.
War
Differences
Risk
In Living In The World By His Own Will And Skill, The Stupidest Peasant Or Tribesman Is More Competent Than The Most Intelligent Worker Or Technician Or Intellectual In A Society Of Specialists.
Work
Intelligent
Skills
It Is A Fact That The Entire Kentucky River System, Which The Central Part Of The State Complacently Depends Upon For Its Future Water, Is Deteriorating Rapidly Because Of Strip Mining, Because Of Bad Farming, Because Of Industrial And Agricultural Pollutants, Because Of Urban Sewage. It Is Deteriorating, That Is To Say, Because Almost Nobody Cares, Or Cares To Know, Where Water Comes From, So Long As It Keeps Coming.
Kentucky
Rivers
Long
Let Me Say And Not Mourn: The World Lives In The Death Of Speech And Sings There.
World
Speech
Let Me
The World Is So Full And Abundant It Is Like A Pregnant Woman Carrying A Child In One Arm And Leading Another By The Hand. Every Puddle In The Lane Is Ringed With Sipping Butterflied That Fly Up In Flutter When You Walk Past In The Late Morning On Your Way To Get The Mail.
Morning
Children
Past
Annual Plants Are Nature's Emergency Medical Service, Seeded In Sounds And Scars To Hold The Land Until The Perennial Cover Is Re-established.
Land
Emergencies
Sound
An Agrarian Mind Begins With The Love Of Fields And Ramifies In Good Farming, Good Cooking & Good Eating
Cooking
Mind
Fields
Under The Rule Of The "free Market" Ideology, We Have Gone Through Two Decades Of An Energy Crisis Without An Effective Energy Policy. Because Of An Easy And Thoughtless Reliance On Imported Oil, We Have No Adequate Policy For The Conservation Of Gasoline And Other Petroleum Products. We Have No Adequate Policy For The Development Or Use Of Other, Less Harmful Forms Of Energy. We Have No Adequate System Of Public Transportation.
Two
Oil
Energy
The Language That Reveals Also Obscures.
Language
The People Who Benefit From This State Of Affairs Have Been At Pains To Convince Us That The Agricultural Practices And Policies That Have Almost Annihilated The Farming Population Have Greatly Benefited The Population Of Food Consumers. But More And More Consumers Are Now Becoming Aware That Our Supposed Abundance Of Cheap And Healthful Food Is To A Considerable Extent Illusory.
Pain
Practice
Convince Us
The Most Alarming Sign Of The State Of Our Society Now Is That Our Leaders Have The Courage To Sacrifice The Lives Of Young People In War But Have Not The Courage To Tell Us That We Must Be Less Greedy And Wasteful.
War
Sacrifice
People
We Have Become Blind To The Alternatives To Violence.
Alternatives
Violence
Blind
Individualism Is Going Around These Days In Uniform, Handing Out The Party Line On Individualism.
Party
Lines
Uniforms
For A Time I Rest In The Grace Of The World, And Am Free.
Grace
World
Still Waters
Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias.
Plant
Millennium
A Liberal Education Rests On The Assumption That Nature And Human Nature Do Not Change Very Much Or Very Fast And That One Therefore Needs To Understand The Past.
Past
Needs
Assumption
If We Are Looking For Insurance Against Want And Oppression, We Will Find It Only In Our Neighbors' Prosperity And Goodwill And, Beyond That, In The Good Health Of Our Worldly Places, Our Homelands. If We Were Sincerely Looking For A Place Of Safety, For Real Security And Success, Then We Would Begin To Turn To Our Communities - And Not The Communities Simply Of Our Human Neighbors But Also Of The Water, Earth, And Air, The Plants And Animals, All The Creatures With Whom Our Local Life Is Shared. (pg. 59, "racism And The Economy")
Real
Animal
Air
There Are Lots Of Bad Things That Can Happen To A Food Economy That's Both Extensive And Centralized. There's No Substitute For Petroleum. To Have A Growth Economy Based On A Declining Fuel Supply Is Bound To Be Stressful.
Growth
Fuel
Economy
People Talk About "job Creation," As If That Had Ever Been The Aim The Industrial Economy. The Aim Was To Replace People With Machines.
Jobs
People
Machines
I Believe That The Community - In The Fullest Sense: A Place And All Its Creatures - Is The Smallest Unit Of Health And That To Speak Of The Health Of An Isolated Individual Is A Contradiction In Terms. (pg. 146, Health Is Membership)
Believe
Community
Membership
We Don't Have A Right To Ask Whether We're Going To Succeed Or Not. The Only Question We Have A Right To Ask Is What's The Right Thing To Do? What Does This Earth Require Of Us If We Want To Continue To Live On It?
Want
Succeed
Doe
For The True Measure Of Agriculture Is Not The Sophistication Of Its Equipment The Size Of Its Income Or Even The Statistics Of Its Productivity But The Good Health Of The Land.
Land
Agriculture
Income
In Losing Stewardship We Lose Fellowship; We Become Outcasts From The Great Neighborhood Of Creation.
Environmental
Fellowship
Losing
With Its Array Of Gadgets And Machines, All Powered By Energies That Are Destructive Of Land Or Air Or Water, And Connected To Work, Market, School, Recreation, Etc., By Gasoline Engines, The Modern Home Is A Veritable Factory Of Waste And Destruction. It Is The Mainstay Of The Economy Of Money. But Within The Economies Of Energy And Nature, It Is A Catastrophe. It Takes In The World's Goods And Converts Them Into Garbage, Sewage, And Noxious Fumes-for None Of Which Have We Found A Use.
Money
Home
School
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
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
It Is Impossible To Prefigure The Salvation Of The World In The Same Language By Which The World Has Been Dismembered And Defaced.
World
Impossible
Language
The Music, While It Lasted, Brought A New World Into Being.
World
New World
Some Nights In The Midst Of This Loneliness I Swung Among The Scattered Stars At The End Of The Thin Thread Of Faith Alone.
Stars
Loneliness
Night
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
We Cannot Comprehend What Comprehends Us.
Comprehension
Every Day You Have Less Reason Not To Give Yourself Away.
Giving
Reason
We Must Waste Less. We Must Do More For Ourselves And For Each Other. It Is Either That Or Continue Merely To Think And Talk About Changes That We Are Inviting Catastrophe To Make. The Great Obstacle Is Simply This: The Conviction That We Cannot Change Because We Are Dependant On What Is Wrong. But That Is The Addict's Excuse, And We Know That It Will Not Do.
Thinking
Waste
Obstacles
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
Under The Discipline Of Unity, Knowledge And Morality Come Together. No Longer Can We Have That Paltry 'objective' Knowledge So Prized By The Academic Specialists. To Know Anything At All Becomes A Moral Predicament. Aware That There Is No Such Thing As A Specialized Effect, One Becomes Responsible For Judgments As Well As Facts. Aware That As An Agricultural Scientist He Had 'one Great Subject,' Sir Albert Howard Could No Longer Ask, What Can I Do With What I Know? Without At The Same Time Asking, How Can I Be Responsible For What I Know?
Discipline
Unity
Together
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
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
We Can Fight The Global Economy With A Strong Local Economy.
Strong
Fighting
Economy
From A Human Point Of View, The Difference Between The Mind Of A Human And That Of A Mountain Goat Is Wonderful; From The Point Of View Of The Infinite Ignorance That Surrounds Us, The Difference Is Not Impressive. Indeed, From That Point Of View, The Goat May Have The Better Mind, For He Is More Congenially Adapted To His Place, And He Would Not Endanger His Species Or His Planet For The Sake Of An Idea.
Nature
Ignorance
Animal
I Don't Think It Is Enough Appreciated How Much An Outdoor Book The Bible Is. It Is A "hypaethral Book," Such As Thoreau Talked About - A Book Open To The Sky. It Is Best Read And Understood Outdoors, And The Farther Outdoors The Better. Or That Has Been My Experience Of It. Passages That Within Walls Seem Improbable Or Incredible, Outdoors Seem Merely Natural. This Is Because Outdoors We Are Confronted Everywhere With Wonders; We See That The Miraculous Is Not Extraordinary But The Common Mode Of Existence. It Is Our Daily Bread.
Wall
Book
Thinking
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
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.
Husband
Wind
Land
My Label Is Just "good Farming", Which Isn't Something You Can Put On A T-shirt.
Labels
T Shirt
Farming
At Night Make Me One With The Darkness In The Morning Make Me One With The Light.
Morning
Night
Light
Love Is Never Abstract. It Does Not Adhere To The Universe Or The Planet Or The Nation Or The Institution Or The Profession, But To The Singular Sparrows Of The Street, The Lilies Of The Field, "to The Least Of These My Brethren." Love Is Not, By Its Own Desire, Heroic. It Is Heroic Only When Compelled To Be. It Exists By Its Willingness To Be Anonymous, Humble, And Unrewarded.
Love
Humble
Desire
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
You Have To Be Able To Imagine Lives That Are Not Yours.
Able
Imagine
As I Have Read The Gospels Over The Years, The Belief Has Grown In Me That Christ Did Not Come To Found An Organized Religion But Came Instead To Found An Unorganized One. He Seems To Have Come To Carry Religion Out Of The Temples Into The Fields And Sheep Pastures, Onto The Roadsides And The Banks Of The Rivers, Into The Houses Of Sinners And Publicans, Into The Town And The Wilderness, Toward The Membership Of All That Is Here. Well, You Can Read And See What You Think.
Thinking
Sheep
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
Better Than Any Argument Is To Rise At Dawn And Pick Dew-wet Red Berries In A Cup.
Food
Cooking
Red Lipstick
The Freedom Of Affluence Opposes And Contradicts The Freedom Of Community Life.
Community
Affluence
We Weren't Allowing Our Hopes To Become Expectations. Expectations Are Tempting, Pleasant, Maybe Necessary. They Are Scary Too, Once You Have Had Some Experience. They Are Not Necessarily And Not Always A Bucket Of Smoke, But They Can Be And Are Even Likely To Be.
Expectations
Scary
Buckets
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
The Only True And Effective "operator's Manual For Spaceship Earth" Is Not A Book That Any Human Will Ever Write; It Is Hundreds Of Thousands Of Local Cultures.
Book
Writing
Culture
Perhaps It Is To Prepare To Hear Some Day The Music Of The Spheres That I Am Always Turning My Ears To The Music Of Streams. There Is Indeed A Music In Streams, But It Is Not For The Hurried. It Has To Be Loitered By And Imagined. Or Imagined Toward, For It Is Hardly For Men At All. Nature Has A Patient Ear. To Her The Slowest Funeral March Sounds Like A Jig. She Is Satisfied To Have The Notes Drawn Out To The Lengths Of Days Or Weeks Or Months. Small Variations Are Acceptable To Her, Modulations As Leisurely As The Opening Of A Flower.
Flower
Men
Funeral
Invest In The Millenium.
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.
War
Military
Differences
We Need Better Government, No Doubt About It. But We Also Need Better Minds, Better Friendships, Better Marriages, Better Communities.
Government
Community
Doubt
I Believe In Thrift As I Believe In Freedom, But I Don't Support The Plutocratic Hostility To Taxation, Regulation, And Protections Of Land, Water, And Air.
Believe
Land
Air
Soil Is Not Usually Lost In Slabs Or Heaps Of Magnificent Tonnage. It Is Lost A Little At A Time Over Millions Of Acres By The Careless Acts Of Millions Of People. It Cannot Be Saved By Heroic Feats Of Gigantic Technology, But Only By Millions Of Small Acts And Restraints, Conditioned By Small Fidelities, Skills, And Desires. Soil Loss Is Ultimately A Cultural Problem; It Will Be Corrected Only By Cultural Solutions.
Loss
Technology
Small Acts
I Don't Think I Had Even Begun To Have An Idea Where I Was Going, But Wherever It Was, That Was Where I Wanted To Go.
Thinking
Ideas
Wanted
You Cannot Devalue The Body And Value The Soul Or Value Anything Else.
Soul
Body
Devalue
It Is Only On The Condition Of Humility And Reverence Before The World That Our Species Will Be Able To Remain In It.
Nature
Humility
Animal
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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