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The Living Can't Quit Living Because The World Has Turned Terrible And People They Love And Need Are Killed. They Can't Because They Don't. The Light That Shines Into Darkness And Never Goes Out Calls Them On Into Life. It Calls Them Back Again Into The Great Room. It Calls Them Into Their Bodies And Into The World, Into Whatever The World Will Require. It Calls Them Into Work And Pleasure, Goodness And Beauty, And The Company Of Other Loved Ones.
-Wendell Berry
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The Living Can't Quit

Wendell Berry
The Living Can't Quit Living Because The World Has Turned Terrible And People They Love And Need Are Killed. They Can't Because They Don't. The Light That Shines Into Darkness And Never Goes Out Calls Them On Into Life. It Calls Them Back Again Into The Great Room. It Calls Them Into Their Bodies And Into The World, Into Whatever The World Will Require. It Calls Them Into Work And Pleasure, Goodness And Beauty, And The Company Of Other Loved Ones.
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Light
People
Shining
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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.
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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.
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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")
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The Name Of Our Proper Connection To The Earth Is 'good Work,' For Good Work Involves Much Giving Of Honor. It Honors The Source Of Its Materials; It Honors The Place Where It Is Done; It Honors The Art By Which It Is Done; It Honors The Thing That It Makes And The User Of The Made Thing.
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The Most Insistent And Formidable Concern Of Agriculture, Wherever It Is Taken Seriously, Is The Distinct Individuality Of Every Farm, Every Field On Every Farm, Every Farm Family, And Every Creature On Every Farm.
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Unless You Absolutely Have Got To Do It, Don’t Buy Anything New.
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
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The World, Which God Looked At And Found Entirely Good, We Find None Too Good To Pollute Entirely And Destroy Piecemeal.
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We Are Living Even Now Among Punishments And Ruins.
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The Christian Gospel Is A Summons To Peace, Calling For Justice Beyond Anger, Mercy Beyond Justice, Forgiveness Beyond Mercy, Love Beyond Forgiveness.
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It's Impossible To Contemplate The Life Of Soil Very Long Without Seeing Its Analogy To The Life Of The Spirit.
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It Is Certain, I Think, That The Best Government Is The One That Governs The Least. But There Is A Much-neglected Corollary: The Best Citizen Is The One Who Least Needs Governing.
Thinking
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An Economy Genuinely Local And Neighborly Offers To Localities A Measure Of Security That They Cannot Derive From A National Or A Global Economy Controlled By People Who, By Principle, Have No Local Commitment.
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When The Mind's An Empty Room The Clear Days Come.
Empty Rooms
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Clear Day
We Cannot Know The Whole Truth, Which Belongs To God Alone, But Our Task Nevertheless Is To Seek To Know What Is True. And If We Offend Gravely Enough Against What We Know To Be True, As By Failing Badly Enough To Deal Affectionately And Responsibly With Our Land And Our Neighbors, Truth Will Retaliate With Ugliness, Poverty, And Disease.
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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
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Novelty Is A New Kind Of Loneliness.
Fear
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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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You May Say That I Am Just Another Outdated Old Man Complaining About Progress And The Changes Of Time. But, You See, I Have Well Considered That Possibility Myself, And Am Prepared O Submit To Correction By Anybody Who Cares About A Community, Who Can Show Me How The World Is Improved By That Community's Dying.
Men
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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.
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As I Age In The World It Will Rise And Spread, And Be For This Place Horizon And Orison, The Voice Of Its Winds. I Have Made Myself A Dream To Dream Of Its Rising, That Has Gentled My Nights. Let Me Desire And Wish Well The Life These Trees May Live When I No Longer Rise In The Mornings To Be Pleased With The Green Of Them Shining, And Their Shadows On The Ground, And The Sound Of The Wind In Them.
Dream
Morning
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You Cannot Affirm The Power Plant And Condemn The Smokestack, Or Affirm The Smoke And Condemn The Cough
Rivers
Environmental
Affirmation
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
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
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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
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If You Establish, Or Reestablish, Local Economies On The Right Scale And With The Right Standard, Then Politics Would Come Right As A Matter Of Course. I Don't Know What You'd Call The Result - Probably Not Capitalism Or Socialism.
Matter
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An Agrarian Mind Begins With The Love Of Fields And Ramifies In Good Farming, Good Cooking & Good Eating
Cooking
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Nature
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It Is Therefore Absurd To Approach The Subject Of Health Piecemeal With A Departmentalized Band Of Specialists. A Medical Doctor Uninterested In Nutrition, In Agriculture, In The Wholesomeness Of Mind And Spirit Is As Absurd As A Farmer Who Is Uninterested In Health. Our Fragmentation Of This Subject Cannot Be Our Cure, Because It Is Our Disease. The Body Cannot Be Whole Alone. Persons Cannot Be Whole Alone. It Is Wrong To Think That Bodily Health Is Compatible With Spiritual Confusion Or Cultural Disorder, Or With Polluted Air And Water Or Impoverished Soil.
Spiritual
Thinking
Air
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Land
Agriculture
People
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Believe
Cities
Long
Individualism Is Going Around These Days In Uniform, Handing Out The Party Line On Individualism.
Party
Lines
Uniforms
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
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Circles
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This, I Thought, Is What Is Meant By 'thy Will Be Done' In The Lord's Prayer, Which I Had Prayed Time And Again Without Thinking About It. It Means That Your Will And God's Will May Not Be The Same. It Means There's A Good Possibility That You Won't Get What You Pray For. It Means That In Spite Of Your Prayers You Are Going To Suffer.
Prayer
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Thinking
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
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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
Knowing
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The Language That Reveals Also Obscures.
Language
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Mind
Failing
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Inspiring
Law
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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
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
Want Of Imagination Makes Things Unreal Enough To Be Destroyed. By Imagination I Mean Knowledge And Love. I Mean Compassion. People Of Power Kill Children, The Old Send The Young To Die, Because They Have No Imagination. They Have Power. Can You Have Power And Imagination At The Same Time? Can You Kill People You Don’t Know And Have Compassion For Them At The Same Time?
Children
Mean
Compassion
The Constructions Of Language, Which Is To Say The Constructions Of Thought, Are Formed Within Experience, Not The Other Way Around.
Way
Language
Construction
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
There Is Change By Necessity Or Adaptation, And There Is Contrived Change Or Novelty.
Novelty
Internet
Adaptation
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.
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Energy
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
Not Just Self-restraint, That Old Killjoy, But Communal Restraint.
Self
Restraint
Killjoy
He Never Complained. He Seemed To Have No Instinct For The Making Much Of Oneself That Complaining Requires.
Complaining
Instinct
Oneself
The Past Is Our Definition. We May Strive With Good Reason To Escape It, Or To Escape What Is Bad In It. But We Will Escape It Only By Adding Something Better To It.
Inspirational
Wise
Memories
Let Us Have The Candor To Acknowledge That What We Call "the Economy" Or "the Free Market" Is Less And Less Distinguishable From Warfare.
Warfare
Economy
Candor
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
We Have Become Blind To The Alternatives To Violence.
Alternatives
Violence
Blind
I'd Rather Rely On Mother Nature's Wisdom Than Man's Cleverness
Mother
Men
Cleverness
...and We Pray, Not For New Earth Or Heaven, But To Be Quiet In Heart, And In Eye Clear. What We Need Is Here.
Heart
Eye
Heaven
The Shoddy Work Of Despair, The Pointless Work Of Pride, Equally Betray Creation. They Are Wastes Of Life.
Pride
Despair
Waste
The Poem Is Important, But Not More Than The People Whose Survival It Serves.
People
Survival
Important
Love The Quick Profit, The Annual Raise, Vacation With Pay. Want More Of Everything Ready-made. Be Afraid To Know Your Neighbors And To Die. And You Will Have A Window In Your Head. Not Even Your Future Will Be A Mystery Any More. Your Mind Will Be Punched In A Card And Shut Away In A Little Drawer. When They Want You To Buy Something They Will Call You. When They Want You To Die For Profit They Will Let You Know.
Vacation
Mind
Cards
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
Light
Tree
Answers
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
For Any Sin, We All Suffer. That Is Why Our Suffering Is Endless.
Suffering
Sin
Endless
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
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
It Is Better To Buy From A Small, Privately Owned Local Store Than From A Chain Store. It Is Better To Buy A Good Product Than A Bad One. Do Not Buy Anything You Don't Need. Do As Much As You Can For Yourself. If You Cannot Do Something For Yourself, See If You Have A Neighbor Who Can Do It For You. Do Everything You Can To See That Your Money Stays As Long As Possible In The Local Community.
Long
Community
Environmental
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
I Lack The Peace Of Simple Things. I Am Never Wholly In Place. I Find No Peace Or Grace. We Sell The World To Buy Fire, Our Way Lighted By Burning Men.
Simple
Men
Fire
To The Extent That We Consume, In Our Present Circumstances, We Are Guilty. To The Extent That We Guilty Consumers Are Conservationists, We Are Absurd. But What Can We Do? Must We Go On Writing Letters To Politicians And Donating To Conservation Organizations Until The Majority Of Our Fellow Citizens Agree With Us? Or Can We Do Something Directly To Solve Our Share Of The Problem? I Am A Conservationist. I Believe Wholeheartedly In Putting Pressure On The Politicians And In Maintaining The Conservation Organizations.
Believe
Writing
Organization
Despite Its Protests To The Contrary, Modern Christianity Has Become Willy-nilly The Religion Of The State And The Economic Status Quo. Because It Has Been So Exclusively Dedicated To Incanting Anemic Souls Into Heaven, It Has Been Made The Tool Of Much Earthly Villainy. It Has, For The Most Part, Stood Silently By While A Predatory Economy Has Ravaged The World, Destroyed Its Natural Beauty And Health, Divided And Plundered Its Human Communities And Households.
Community
Heaven
Soul
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
Invest In The Millenium.
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
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
You Cannot Devalue The Body And Value The Soul Or Value Anything Else.
Soul
Body
Devalue
Nobody Can Discover The World For Somebody Else. Only When We Discover It For Ourselves Does It Become Common Ground And A Common Bond And We Cease To Be Alone.
Inspirational
Courage
Travel
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
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
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
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
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
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
Can We Actually Suppose That We Are Wasting, Polluting, And Making Ugly This Beautiful Land For The Sake Of Patriotism And The Love Of God? Perhaps Some Of Us Would Like To Think So, But In Fact This Destruction Is Taking Place Because We Have Allowed Ourselves To Believe, And To Live, A Mated Pair Of Economic Lies: That Nothing Has A Value That Is Not Assigned To It By The Market; And That The Economic Life Of Our Communities Can Safely Be Handed Over To The Great Corporations.
Beautiful
Lying
Believe
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
I Think The Issues Of Identity Mostly Are Poppycock. We Are What We Have Done, Which Includes Our Promises, Includes Our Hopes, But Promises First.
Thinking
Issues
Promise
There's A World Of Difference . . . Between That Information To Which We Now Presumably Have Access By Way Of Computers, Libraries, And The Rest Of It, Great Stockpiles Of Data, And The Knowledge That People Have In Their Bones By Which They Do Good Work And Live Good Lives.
Life
Data
Differences
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
Devil
This Curious Faith Is Predicated On The Notion That We Will Soon Develop Unlimited New Sources Of Energy: Domestic Oil Fields, Shale Oil, Gasified Coal, Nuclear Power, Solar Energy, And So On. This Is Fantastical Because The Basic Cause Of The Energy Crisis Is Not Scarcity: It Is Moral Ignorance And Weakness Of Character. We Don't Know How To Use Energy Or What To Use It For. And We Cannot Restrain Ourselves. Our Time Is Characterized As Much By The Abuse And Waste Of Human Energy As It Is By The Abuse And Waste Of Fossil Fuel Energy.
Ignorance
Character
Oil
To Live, We Must Daily Break The Body And Shed The Blood Of Creation. When We Do This Knowingly, Lovingly, Skillfully, Reverently, It Is A Sacrament. When We Do It Ignorantly, Greedily, Clumsily, Destructively, It Is A Desecration. In Such Desecration We Condemn Ourselves To Spiritual And Moral Loneliness, And Others To Want.
Spiritual
Loneliness
Food
To Defend What We Love We Need A Particularizing Language, For We Love What We Particularly Know.
Needs
Language
Knows
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
Be Like The Fox Who Makes More Tracks Than Necessary, Some In The Wrong Direction. Practice Resurrection.
Practice
Track
Foxes
Whether We And Our Politicians Know It Or Not, Nature Is Party To All Our Deals And Decisions, And She Has More Votes, A Longer Memory, And A Sterner Sense Of Justice Than We Do.
Nature
Memories
Party
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
We Do Not Need To Plan Or Devise A "world Of The Future"; If We Take Care Of The World Of The Present, The Future Will Have Received Full Justice From Us. A Good Future Is Implicit In The Soils, Forests, Grasslands, Marshes, Deserts, Mountains, Rivers, Lakes, And Oceans That We Have Now, And In The Good Things Of Human Culture That We Have Now; The Only Valid "futurology" Available To Us Is To Take Care Of Those Things. We Have No Need To Contrive And Dabble At "the Future Of The Human Race"; We Have The Same Pressing Need That We Have Always Had - To Love, Care For, And Teach Our Children.
Children
Ocean
Lakes
They Learned To Have A Very High Opinion Of God And A Very Low Opinion Of His Works—although They Could Tell You That This World Had Been Made By God Himself. What They Didn’t See Was That It Is Beautiful, And That Some Of The Greatest Beauties Are The Briefest.
Beautiful
World
Opinion
The Mind That Is Not Baffled, Is Unemployed
Mind
Baffled
Unemployed
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
We Clasp The Hands Of Those Who Go Before Us.
Hands
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
To Be Patient In An Emergency Is A Terrible Trial.
Trials
Emergencies
Patient
The Hierarchy Of Power Is Not The Same As The Hierarchy Of Value. A Good Human Is Higher Than The Animals On Both Scales; An Evil Human Is High On The Scale Of Power, But At The Very Bottom Of The Scale Of Values.
Animal
Evil
Hierarchy
True Solitude Is Found In The Wild Places, Where One Is Without Human Obligation. One's Inner Voices Become Audible... In Consequence, One Responds More Clearly To Other Lives.
Wild Places
Voice
Solitude
We Need Better Government, No Doubt About It. But We Also Need Better Minds, Better Friendships, Better Marriages, Better Communities.
Government
Community
Doubt
Only By Restoring The Broken Connections Can We Be Healed. Connection Is Health. And What Our Society Does Its Best To Disguise From Us Is How Ordinary, How Commonly Attainable, Health Is. We Lose Our Health -- And Create Profitable Diseases And Dependencies -- By Failing To See The Direct Connections Between Living And Eating, Eating And Working, Working And Loving.
Broken
Ordinary
Connections
Odd As I Am Sure It Will Appear To Some, I Can Think Of No Better Form Of Personal Involvement In The Cure Of The Environment Than That Of Gardening. A Person Who Is Growing A Garden, If He Is Growing It Organically, Is Improving A Piece Of The World. He Is Producing Something To Eat, Which Makes Him Somewhat Independent Of The Grocery Business, But He Is Also Enlarging, For Himself, The Meaning Of Food And The Pleasure Of Eating.
Independent
Garden
Thinking
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
Under The Pavement The Dirt Is Dreaming Of Grass.
Dream
Dirt
Pavement
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
It Is The Man Who Can Think Of No Alternative To His Enslavement Who Is Truly A Slave.
Men
Thinking
Alternatives
Professional Standards, The Standards Of Ambition And Selfishness, Are Always Sliding Downward Toward Expense, Ostentation, And Mediocrity. They Tend Always To Narrow The Ground Of Judgment. But Amateur Standards, The Standards Of Love, Are Always Straining Upward Toward The Humble And The Best. They Enlarge The Ground Of Judgment. The Context Of Love Is The World.
Life
Humble
Ambition
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
To Go In The Dark With A Light Is To Know The Light. To Know The Dark, Go Dark.
Dark
Light
Knows
A Man With A Machine And Inadequate Culture Is A Pestilence.
Men
Culture
Machines
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
The Real Work Of Planet-saving Will Be Small, Humble, And Humbling, And (insofar As It Involves Love) Pleasing And Rewarding. Its Jobs Will Be Too Many To Count, Too Many To Report, Too Many To Be Publicly Noticed Or Rewarded, Too Small To Make Anyone Rich Or Famous.
Jobs
Real
Humble
Go With Your Love To The Fields. Lie Down In The Shade. Rest Your Head In Her Lap. Swear Allegiance To What Is Nighest Your Thoughts. As Soon As The Generals And The Politicos Can Predict The Motions Of Your Mind, Lose It. Leave It As A Sign To Mark The False Trail, The Way You Didn't Go. Be Like The Fox Who Makes More Tracks Than Necessary, Some In The Wrong Direction. Practice Resurrection.
Lying
Practice
Track
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
Specialization Is The Great Evil Of Civilization.
Civilization
Evil
Specialization
The Religion And The Environmentalism Of The Highly Industrialized Countries Are At Bottom A Sham, Because They Make It Their Business To Fight Against Something That They Do Not Really Wish To Destroy. We All Live By Robbing Nature, But Our Standard Of Living Demands That The Robbery Shall Continue. We Must Achieve The Character And Acquire The Skills To Live Much Poorer Than We Do.
Country
Character
Fighting
My Label Is Just "good Farming", Which Isn't Something You Can Put On A T-shirt.
Labels
T Shirt
Farming
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
The Mercy Of The World Is Time. Time Does Not Stop For Love, But It Does Not Stop For Death And Grief, Either.
Grief
Doe
World
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
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
The Ability To Speak Exactly Is Intimately Related To The Ability To Know Exactly.
Exactly Is
Speak
Ability
The Care Of The Earth Is Our Most Ancient And Most Worthy, And After All Our Most Pleasing Responsibility. To Cherish What Remains Of It And To Foster Its Renewal Is Our Only Hope.
Nature
Responsibility
Garden
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
Never Forget: We Are Alive Within Mysteries.
Life
Alive
Never Forget
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
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
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
A Sustainable Agriculture Does Not Deplete Soils Or People.
Agriculture
People
Doe
A Person Who Undertakes To Grow A Garden At Home, By Practices That Will Preserve Rather Than Exploit The Economy Of The Soil, Has His Mind Precisely Against What Is Wrong With Us.
Home
Garden
Practice
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
Young Lovers See A Vision Of The World Redeemed By Love. That Is The Truest Thing They Ever See, For Without It Life Is Death.
Vision
World
Lovers
Waking Up From A Dream Of Violence Is Much The Same As Waking Up From A Dream Of Love. You Must Go On Living Your Life.
Dream
Love You
Live Your Life
When You Take Away The Subsistence Economy, Then Your Farm Population Is Seriously Exposed To The Vagaries Of The Larger Economy. As It Used To Be, The Subsistence Economy Carried People Through The Hard Times, And What You Might Call The Housewife's Economy Of Cream And Eggs Often Held These Farms And Their Families Together.
Hard Times
Eggs
People
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
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
Creation Is Thus God's Presence In Creatures. The Greek Orthodox Theologian Philip Sherrard Has Written That "creation Is Nothing Less Than The Manifestation Of God's Hidden Being." This Means That We And All Other Creatures Live By A Sanctity That Is Inexpressibly Intimate, For To Every Creature, The Gift Of Life Is A Portion Of The Breath And Spirit Of God. (pg. 308, Christianity And The Survival Of Creation)
Mean
Greek
Survival
Let Me Say And Not Mourn: The World Lives In The Death Of Speech And Sings There.
World
Speech
Let Me
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
It Is Wrong To Condemn People For Doing A Thing And Then Offer No Alternative But Failure. A Person Could Get Mad About That.
Mad
People
Alternatives
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
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
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
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
The Soil Is The Great Connector Of Lives, The Source And Destination Of All. It Is The Healer And Restorer And Resurrector, By Which Disease Passes Into Health, Age Into Youth, Death Into Life. Without Proper Care For It We Can Have No Community, Because Without Proper Care For It We Can Have No Life.
Community
Age
Care
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
We Don't Know How To Use Energy Or What To Use It For. And We Cannot Restrain Ourselves. Our Time Is Characterized As Much By The Abuse And Waste Of Human Energy As It Is By The Abuse And Waste Of Fossil Fuel Energy.
Abuse
Energy
Fuel
We Had Entered An Era Of Limitlessness, Or The Illusion Thereof, And This In Itself Is A Sort Of Wonder. My Grandfather Lived A Life Of Limits, Both Suffered And Strictly Observed, In A World Of Limits. I Learned Much Of That World From Him And Others, And Then I Changed; I Entered The World Of Labor-saving Machines And Of Limitless Cheap Fossil Fuel. 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
Grandfather
You Cannot Save The Land Apart From The People, Or The People Apart From The Land.
Land
People
The Uplands Of My Home Country In North Central Kentucky Are Sloping And Easily Eroded, Dependent For Safekeeping Upon Year-round Cover Of Perennial Plants.
Country
Home
Kentucky
The Music, While It Lasted, Brought A New World Into Being.
World
New World
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
Love Changes, And In Change Is True.
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
Rats And Roaches Live By Competition Under The Laws Of Supply And Demand; It Is The Privilege Of Human Beings To Live Under The Laws Of Justice And Mercy.
Law
Justice
Competition
Ask The Questions That Have No Answers. Invest In The Millenium. Plant Sequoias.
Answers
Plant
Asks
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
Supporters Of The War Are Constantly Asking Those Who Oppose It: Why Don't You Deplore The Wrongs And Atrocities Committed By The Other Side? The Answer, So Far As I Am Concerned, Is That I Do Deplore The Wrongs And Atrocities Committed By The Other Side. But I Am Responsible For The Wrongs And Atrocities Committed By Our Side. And I Am No Longer Able To Participate In The Assumption That Atrocities Committed By Remote Control Are Less Objectionable Than Those Committed At Arm's Length. I Am Most Concerned With American Obstacles To Peace Because I Am An American.
War
Atrocities Committed
Asking
An Art That Heals And Protects Its Subject Is A Geography Of Scars.
Art
Scar
Geography
There Comes . . . A Longing Never To Travel Again Except On Foot.
Journey
Feet
Hiking
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
To Think Better, To Think Like The Best Humans, We Are Probably Going To Have To Learn Again To Judge A Person's Intelligence, Not By The Ability To Recite Facts, But By The Good Order Or Harmoniousness Of His Or Her Surroundings. We Must Suspect That Any Statistical Justification Of Ugliness And Violence Is A Revelation Of Stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, And Community)
Thinking
Order
Land
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
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
I’ve Been Thinking About That Question About What City People Can Do. The Main Thing Is To Realize That Country People Can’t Invent A Better Agriculture By Ourselves. Industrial Agriculture Wasn’t Invented By Us, And We Can’t Uninvent It. We’ll Need Some Help With That.
Country
Thinking
Cities
We Cannot Comprehend What Comprehends Us.
Comprehension
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
People Use Drugs, Legal And Illegal, Because Their Lives Are Intolerably Painful Or Dull. They Hate Their Work And Find No Rest In Their Leisure. They Are Estranged From Their Families And Their Neighbors. It Should Tell Us Something That In Healthy Societies Drug Use Is Celebrative, Convivial, And Occasional, Whereas Among Us It Is Lonely, Shameful, And Addictive. We Need Drugs, Apparently, Because We Have Lost Each Other.
Lonely
Hate
Drug Use
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
There Are Some Things The Arrogant Mind Does Not See; It Is Blinded By Its Vision Of What It Desires.
Mind
Vision
Desire
Laughter Is Immeasurable. Be Joyful
Laughter
Joyful
The Two Great Aims Of Industrialism — Replacement Of People By Technology And Concentration Of Wealth Into The Hands Of A Small Plutocracy — Seem Close To Fulfillment.
Technology
Hands
Two
To Have Good Farming Or Good Land Use Of Any Kind, You Have Got To Have Limits. Capitalism Doesn't Acknowledge Limits.
Land
Use
Limits
The Soil Under The Grass Is Dreaming Of A Young Forest, And Under The Pavement The Soil Is Dreaming Of Grass.
Dream
Pavement
Soil
Our Land Passes In And Out Of Our Bodies Just As Our Bodies Pass In And Out Of Our Land
Land
Body
To Be Sane In A Mad Time Is Bad For The Brain, Worse For The Heart.
Heart
Mad
Brain
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
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
We Have The World To Live In On The Condition That We Will Take Good Care Of It. And To Take Good Care Of It We Have To Know It. And To Know It And To Be Willing To Take Care Of It, We Have To Love It.
World
Care
Willing
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?
Dream
Thinking
People
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
To Treat Life As Less Than A Miracle Is To Give Up On It.
Life
Giving Up
Miracle
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
The Latest Technology Is Not Always Good For Anything Except To The Producers Of The Technology.
Technology
Producers
Latest Technology
Geese Appear High Over Us, / Pass, And The Sky Closes. Abandon, / As In Love Or Sleep, Holds Them To Their Way, Clear / In The Ancient Faith: What We Need / Is Here. And We Pray, Not / For New Earth Or Heaven, But To Be / Quiet In Heart, And In Eye, / Clear. What We Need Is Here.
Sleep
Eye
Heart
[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
A Change Of Heart Or Of Values Without A Practice Is Only Another Pointless Luxury Of A Passively Consumptive Way Of Life.
Heart
Practice
Luxury
We Live The Given Life, And Not The Planned.
Given
Given Life
When The Self Is Ones Exclusive Subject And Limit, Reference And Measure, One Has No Choice But To Make A World Of Words.
Self
Choices
World
The World Is Not Given By Our Fathers But Borrowed From Our Children.
Children
Father
World
A Person Who Undertakes To Grow A Garden At Home, By Practices That Will Preserve Rather Than Exploit The Economy Of The Soil, Has His Mind Precisely Against What Is Wrong With Us... What I Am Saying Is That If We Apply Our Minds Directly And Competently To The Needs Of The Earth, Then We Will Have Begun To Make Fundamental And Necessary Changes In Our Minds. We Will Begin To Understand And To Mistrust And To Change Our Wasteful Economy, Which Markets Not Just The Produce Of Earth, But Also The Earth's Ability To Produce.
Home
Garden
Practice
Sabbath Observance Invites Us To Stop. It Invites Us To Rest. It Asks Us To Notice That While We Rest, The World Continues Without Our Help. It Invites Us To Delight In The World's Beauty And Abundance.
Delight
World
Helping
A Farmer's Market Is Worth More Than Everything I've Written.
Family
Farmers
Written
Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer
Computer
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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