Background Image
The Sense Of It May Come With Watching A Flock Of Cedar Waxwings Eating Wild Grapes In The Top Of The Woods On A November Afternoon. Everything They Do Is Leisurely. They Pick The Grapes With A Curious Deliberation, Comb Their Feathers, Converse In High Windy Whistles. Now And Then One Will Fly Out And Back In A Sort Of Dancing Flight Full Of Whimsical Flutters And Turns. They Are Like Farmers Loafing In Their Own Fields On Sunday. Though They Have No Sundays, Their Days Are Full Of Sabbaths.
-Wendell Berry
Please Wait....
Translating....

The Sense Of It

Wendell Berry
The Sense Of It May Come With Watching A Flock Of Cedar Waxwings Eating Wild Grapes In The Top Of The Woods On A November Afternoon. Everything They Do Is Leisurely. They Pick The Grapes With A Curious Deliberation, Comb Their Feathers, Converse In High Windy Whistles. Now And Then One Will Fly Out And Back In A Sort Of Dancing Flight Full Of Whimsical Flutters And Turns. They Are Like Farmers Loafing In Their Own Fields On Sunday. Though They Have No Sundays, Their Days Are Full Of Sabbaths.
Views: 39779
Topic
Sunday
Dancing
Cedars
More From Wendell Berry
The Music, While It Lasted, Brought A New World Into Being.
World
New World
Why Should Conservationists Have A Positive Interest In... Farming? There Are Lots Of Reasons, But The Plainest Is: Conservationists Eat.
Farming
Reason
Should
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
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
Unexpected Wonders Happen, Not On Schedule, Or When You Expect Or Want Them To Happen, But If You Keep Hanging Around, They Do Happen.
Schedules
Want
Unexpected
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
A Sustainable Agriculture Is One Which Depletes Neither The People Nor The Land.
Land
Agriculture
People
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
Unless You Absolutely Have Got To Do It, Don’t Buy Anything New.
A Teacher's Major Contribution May Pop Out Anonymuosly In The Life Of Some Ex-student's Grandchild.
Teacher
Grandchildren
May
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
I Could Die In Peace, I Think, If The World Was Beautiful. To Know It's Being Ruined Is Hard.
Beautiful
Thinking
World
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
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
Only By Restoring The Broken Connections Can We Be Healed. Connection Is Health.
Broken
Connections
Interdependence
For Any Sin, We All Suffer. That Is Why Our Suffering Is Endless.
Suffering
Sin
Endless
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
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
It May Be That When We No Longer Know What To Do, We Have Come To Our Real Work, And That When We No Longer Know Which Way To Go, We Have Begun Our Real Journey.
Inspirational
Life
Wisdom
If One Accepts The 24th And 104th Psalms As Scriptural Norms, Then Surface Mining And Other Forms Of Earth Destruction Are Perversions. If We Take The Gospels Seriously, How Can We Not See Industrial Warfare - With Its Inevitable Massacre Of Innocents - As A Most Shocking Perversion? By The Standard Of All Scriptures, Neglect Of The Poor, Of Widows And Orphans, Of The Sick, The Homeless, The Insane, Is An Abominable Perversion.
Widows And Orphans
Sick
Insane
What I Stand For Is What I Stand On.
I Have Always Loved A Window, Especially An Open One.
Window
The Language That Reveals Also Obscures.
Language
Our Politics And Science Have Never Mastered The Fact That People Need More Than To Understand Their Obligation To One Another And To The Earth; They Need Also The Feeling Of Such Obligation, And The Feeling Can Come Only Within The Patterns Of Familiarity. A Nation Of Urban Nomads, Such As We Have Become, May Simply Be Unable To Be Enough Disturbed By Its Destruction Of The Ecological Health Of The Land, Because The People's Dependence On The Land, Though It Has Been Expounded To Them Over And Over Again In General Terms, Is Not Immediate To Their Feelings.
Land
People
Feelings
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
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
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
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
Long Live Gravity! Long Live Stupidity, Error, And Greed In The Palaces Of Fantasy Capitalism!
Errors
Long
Stupidity
Our Land Passes In And Out Of Our Bodies Just As Our Bodies Pass In And Out Of Our Land
Land
Body
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.
Taken
Agriculture
Individuality
Monsanto Doesn't Care About Feeding The World. We Have To Think About The Wage Slavery Of Migrant Workers And Salary Slavery Of Those Who Are Desperately Unhappy.
Freedom
Thinking
Unhappy
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
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
Perhaps All The Good That Ever Has Come Here Has Come Because People Prayed It Into The World.
People
World
A Proper Education Enables Young People To Put Their Lives In Order, Which Means Knowing What Things Are More Important Than Other Things; It Means Putting First Things First.
Education
Mean
Order
All We Can Do To Prepare Rightly For Tomorrow Is To Do The Right Thing Today.
Today
Tomorrow
Can Do
You Cannot Save The Land Apart From The People, Or The People Apart From The Land.
Land
People
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
Lakes
History Overflows Time. Love Overflows The Allowance Of The World. All The Vessels Overflow, And No End Or Limit Stays Put. Every Shakable Thing Has Got To Be Shaken. In A Sense, Nothing That Was Ever Lost In Port William Ever Has Been Replaced. In Another Sense, Nothing Is Ever Lost, And We Are Compacted Together Forever, Even By Our Failures, Our Regrets, And Our Longings.
Regret
Community
Forever
In Health The Flesh Is Graced, The Holy Enters The World.
World
Flesh
Healthcare
So It Is That The Life Force May Take Possession Of A Man-- So That In The End He May Be Possessed By Something Greater, No Longer At All Belonging To Himself.
Men
May
Ends
The Earth Is What We All Have In Common.
Nature
Earth Day
Environmental
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
The Freedom Of Affluence Opposes And Contradicts The Freedom Of Community Life.
Community
Affluence
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
Give Your Approval To All You Cannot Understand.
Giving
Approval
However Destructive May Be The Policies Of The Government And The Methods And Products Of The Corporations, The Root Of The Problem Is Always Found To Be Found In Private Life. We Must Learn To See That Every Problem That Concerns Us As Conservationists Always Leads Straight To The Question Of How We Live. The World Is Being Destroyed, No Doubt About It, By The Greed Of The Rich And Powerful. It Is Also Being Destroyed By Popular Demand.
Powerful
Government
Roots
It Is A Horrible Fact That We Can Read In The Daily Paper, Without Interrupting Our Breakfast, Numerical Reckonings Of Death And Destruction That Ought To Break Our Hearts Or Scare Us Out Of Our Wits.
Heart
Scare
Paper
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
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
Mean
Thinking
There Are No Unsacred Places; There Are Only Sacred Places And Desecrated Places.
Sacred
Sacred Places
Gathering Places
Always In The Big Woods When You Leave Familiar Ground And Step Off Alone Into A New Place There Will Be, Along With The Feelings Of Curiosity And Excitement, A Little Nagging Of Dread. It Is The Ancient Fear Of The Unknown, And It Is Your First Bond With The Wilderness You Are Going Into.
Challenges
Feelings
Risk
Rural Poverty Happens Because People Aren't Being Paid To Take Adequate Care Of Their Places. There's Lots Of Work To Do Here. And You Can't Afford To Pay Anybody To Do It! If You Depress The Price Of The Products Of The Place Below A Certain Level, People Can't Afford To Maintain It. And That's The Rural Dilemma.
Depressing
People
Levels
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
The Promoters Of The Global Economy...see Nothing Odd Or Difficult About Unlimited Economic Growth Or Unlimited Consumption In A Limited World.
Growth
World
Odd
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
At Home The Great Delight Is To See The Clover And Grass Now Growing On Places That Were Bare When We Came. These Small Healings Of The Ground Are My Model Accomplishment-everything Else I Do Must Aspire To That. While I Was At That Work The World Gained With Every Move I Made, And I Harmed Nothing.
Moving
Healing
Home
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
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
Because By Definition They Lack Any Sense Of Mutuality Or Wholeness, Our Specializations Subsist On Conflict With One Another. The Rule Is Never To Cooperate, But Rather To Follow One's Own Interest As Far As Possible. Checks And Balances Are All Applied Externally, By Opposition, Never By Self-restraint. Labor, Management, The Military, The Government, Etc., Never Forbear Until Their Excesses Arouse Enough Opposition To Force Them To Do So.
Military
Government
Self
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
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
A Man's Life Is Always Dealing With Permanence, That Is The Most Dangerous Kind Of Irresponsibility Is To Think Of Your Doings As Temporary.
Men
Thinking
Kind
Having Hope Is Hard; Harder When You Get Older.
Having Hope
Harder
Hard
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
...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
It Is To Be Broken. It Is To Be Torn Open. It Is Not To Be Reached And Come To Rest In Ever. I Turn Against You, I Break From You, I Turn To You. We Hurt, And Are Hurt, And Have Each Other For Healing. It Is Healing. It Is Never Whole.
Hurt
Healing
Broken
Far From Making Peace, Wars Invariably Serve As Classrooms And Laboratories Where Men And Techniques And States Of Mind Are Prepared For The Next War.
War
Men
Mind
Healing Is Impossible In Loneliness; It Is The Opposite Of Loneliness. Conviviality Is Healing. To Be Healed We Must Come With All The Other Creatures To The Feast Of Creation. (pg.99, "the Body And The Earth")
Loneliness
Healing
Opposites
The Ecological Principle In Agriculture Is To Connect The Genius Of The Place, To Fit The Farming To The Farm.
Agriculture
Principles
Genius
We Are Now, Measurably, Reducing The Availability Of These Life-supporting Goods Which We Can Think Of (though Only On The Conditions Of Good Health And Good Care) As Self-renewing Or "sustainable." We Are Also Destroying Rapidly The Supplies Of The Fossil Fuels, Which Are Limited And Not Renewable, And On Which We Have Become Totally Dependent.
Thinking
Self
Availability
We Cannot Comprehend What Comprehends Us.
Comprehension
My Wish Simply Is To Live My Life As Fully As I Can. In Both Our Work And Our Leisure, I Think, We Should Be So Employed. And In Our Time This Means That We Must Save Ourselves From The Products That We Are Asked To Buy In Order, Ultimately, To Replace Ourselves.
Life
Positive
Passion
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
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
Living Without Expectations Is Hard But, When You Can Do It, Good. Living Without Hope Is Harder, And That Is Bad. You Have Got To Have Hope, And You Must'nt Shirk It. Love, After All, Hopeth All Things. But Maybe You Must Learn, And It Is Hard Learning, Not To Hope Out Loud, Especially For Other People. You Must Not Let Your Hope Turn Into Expectation.
People
Expectations
Loud
We Still (sometimes) Remember That We Cannot Be Free If Our Minds And Voices Are Controlled By Someone Else. But We Have Neglected To Understand That We Cannot Be Free If Our Food And Its Sources Are Controlled By Someone Else. The Condition Of The Passive Consumer Of Food Is Not A Democratic Condition. One Reason To Eat Responsibly Is To Live Free. (pg. 323, The Pleasures Of Eating)
Voice
Mind
Remember
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
There Is Much Good Work To Be Done By Every One Of Us And We Must Begin To Do It.
Work
Done
Good Work
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
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
The Latest Technology Is Not Always Good For Anything Except To The Producers Of The Technology.
Technology
Producers
Latest Technology
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
Community
Progress
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
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
Laughter Is Immeasurable. Be Joyful
Laughter
Joyful
You Cannot Affirm The Power Plant And Condemn The Smokestack, Or Affirm The Smoke And Condemn The Cough
Rivers
Environmental
Affirmation
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
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
Organization
Our World
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
There Comes . . . A Longing Never To Travel Again Except On Foot.
Journey
Feet
Hiking
I See That The Life Of This Place Is Always Emerging Beyond Expectation Or Prediction Or Typicality, That It Is Unique, Given To The World Minute By Minute, Only Once, Never To Be Repeated. And This Is When I See That This Life Is A Miracle, Absolutely Worth Having, Absolutely Worth Saving. We Are Alive Within Mystery, By Miracle.
Unique
Expectations
Miracle
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 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
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
I Don't Believe That Grief Passes Away. It Has Its Time And Place Forever. More Time Is Added To It; It Becomes A Story Within A Story. But Grief And Griever Alike Endure.
Grief
Believe
Forever
Without Animals, Something Essential Is Removed From The Minds Of The Farmers.
Animal
Mind
Essentials
Only The Action That Is Moved By Love For The Good At Hand Has The Hope Of Being Responsible And Generous.
Hands
Action
Responsible
We Can Make Ourselves Whole Only By Accepting Our Partiality, By Living Within Our Limits, By Being Humans Not By Trying To Be Gods.
Simple
Trying
Limits
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
Under The Pavement The Dirt Is Dreaming Of Grass.
Dream
Dirt
Pavement
To Be Well Used, Creatures And Places Must Be Used Sympathetically, Just As They Must Be Known Sympathetically To Be Well Known...the "animal Scientist" To Whom It Is Of No Concern Whether Or Not Animals Suffer Will Almost Inevitably Aid And Abet The Destruction Of The Decent Old Ideal Of Animal Husbandry And, As A Consequence, Increase The Suffering Of Animals. I Hope That My Country May Be Delivered From The Remote, Cold Abstractions Of University Science.
Country
Animal
Pet
The World, Which God Looked At And Found Entirely Good, We Find None Too Good To Pollute Entirely And Destroy Piecemeal.
World
Found
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.
Pride
Men
Rivers
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
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
The Securest Guarantee Of The Long-term Good Health Of Both Farmland And City Is, I Believe, Locally Produced Food.
Believe
Cities
Long
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
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
The Reason To Preserve Wilderness Is That We Need It. We Need Wilderness Of All Kinds, Large And Small, Public And Private. Wee Need To Go Now And Again Into Places Where Our Work Is Disallowed, Where Our Hopes And Plans Have No Standing. We Need To Come Into The Presence Of The Unqualified And Mysterious Formality Of Creation.
Needs
Unqualified
Mysterious
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
The Cloud Is Free Only To Go With The Wind. The Rain Is Free Only In Falling.
Freedom
Fall
Rain
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.
Commitment
People
Principles
When Going Back Makes Sense, You Are Going Ahead.
Make Sense
The Miraculous Is Not Extraordinary But The Common Mode Of Existence. It Is Our Daily Bread. Whoever Really Has Considered The Lilies Of The Field Or The Birds Of The Air And Pondered The Improbability Of Their Existence In This Warm World Within The Cold And Empty Stellar Distances Will Hardly Balk At The Turning Of Water Into Wine Which Was, After All, A Very Small Miracle. We Forget The Greater And Still Continuing Miracle By Which Water (with Soil And Sunlight) Is Turned Into Grapes.
Distance
Wine
Air
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
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
There Are Two Laws That We Had Better Take To Be Absolute. The First Is That As We Cannot Exempt Ourselves From Living In This World, Then If We Wish To Live, We Cannot Exempt Ourselves From Using The World. If We Cannot Exempt Ourselves From Use, Then We Must Deal With The Issues Raised By Use. And So The Second Law Is That If We Want To Continue Living, We Cannot Exempt Use From Care.
Inspiring
Law
Two
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
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
It Would Not Do For The Consumer To Know That The Hamburger She Is Eating Came From A Steer Who Spent Much Of His Life Standing Deep In His Own Excrement In A Feedlot, Helping To Pollute The Local Streams. Or That The Calf That Yielded The Veal Cutlet On Her Plate Spent Its Life In A Box In Which It Did Not Have Room To Turn Around.
Animal
Rooms
Hamburgers
The More Artificial A Human Environment Becomes, The More The Word ‘natural’ Becomes A Term Of Value.
Environment
Natural
Term
Good Farmers, Who Take Seriously Their Duties As Stewards Of Creation And Of Their Land's Inheritors, Contribute To The Welfare Of Society In More Ways Than Society Usually Acknowledges, Or Even Knows. These Farmers Produce Valuable Goods, Of Course; But They Also Conserve Soil, They Conserve Water, They Conserve Wildlife, They Conserve Open Space, They Conserve Scenery.
Land
Space
Water
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
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
Answers
May
The Old And Honorable Idea Of 'vocation' Is Simply That We Each Are Called, By God, Or By Our Gifts, Or By Our Preference, To A Kind Of Good Work For Which We Are Particularly Fitted.
Ideas
Kind
Good Work
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
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
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
Our Model Citizen Is A Sophisticate Who, Before Puberty, Understands How To Produce A Baby, But Who At The Age Of Thirty Will Not Know How To Produce A Potato
Baby
Age
Citizens
Ask The World To Reveal Its Quietude- Not The Silence Of Machines When They Are Still, But The True Quiet By Which Birdsongs, Trees, Bellworts, Snails, Clouds, Storms Become What They Are, And Are Nothing Else.
Clouds
Silence
Tree
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
We Are Alive Within Mystery, By Miracle... We Have More Than We Can Know. We Know More Than We Can Say.
Miracle
Alive
Mystery
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
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
It Was A Country . . . That He And His People Had Known How To Use And Abuse, But Not How To Preserve.
Country
People
Abuse
Properly Speaking, Global Thinking Is Not Possible... Look At One Of Those Photographs Of Half The Earth Taken From Outer Space, And See If You Recognize Your Neighborhood. The Right Local Questions And Answers Will Be The Right Global Ones. The Amish Question, What Will This Do To Our Community? Tends Toward The Right Answer For The World.
Taken
Thinking
Space
Be Joyful Because It Is Humanly Possible.
Joyful
But The Sower Going Forth To Sow Sets Foot Into Time To Come, The Seeds Falling On His Own Place. He Has Prepared A Way For His Life To Come To Him, If It Will. Like A Tree, He Has Given Roots To The Earth, And Stands Free.
Fall
Cutting
Roots
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
To Be Sane In A Mad Time Is Bad For The Brain, Worse For The Heart.
Heart
Mad
Brain
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
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
When You Are Old You Can Look Back And See Yourself When You Are Young. It Is Almost Like Looking Down From Heaven. And You See Yourself As A Young Woman, Just A Big Girl Really, Half Awake To The World. You See Yourself Happy, Holding In Your Arms A Good, Decent, Gentle, Beloved Young Man With The Blood Keen In His Veins, Who Before Long Is Going To Disappear, Just Disappear, Into A Storm Of Hate And Flying Metal And Fire. And You Just Don't Know It.
Girl
Hate
Men
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
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
In Order To Survive, A Plurality Of True Communities Would Require Not Egalitarianism And Tolerance But Knowledge, An Understanding Of The Necessity Of Local Differences, And Respect. Respect, I Think, Always Implies Imagination - The Ability To See One Another, Across Our Inevitable Differences, As Living Souls.
Thinking
Egalitarianism
Differences
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
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.
Light
People
Shining
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
An Agrarian Mind Begins With The Love Of Fields And Ramifies In Good Farming, Good Cooking & Good Eating
Cooking
Mind
Fields
To Cherish What Remains Of The Earth And To Foster Its Renewal Is Our Only Legitimate Hope Of Survival.
Nature
Garden
Earth Day
But We Can Do Nothing For The Human Future That We Will Not Do For The Human Present. For The Amelioration Of The Future Condition Of Our Kind We Must Look, Not To The Wealth Or The Genius Of The Coming Generations, But To The Quality Of The Disciplines And Attitudes That We Are Preparing Now For Their Use.
Attitude
Discipline
Quality
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
Eaters Must Understand That Eating Takes Place Inescapably In The World, That It Is Inescapably An Agricultural Act, And That How We Eat Determines, To A Considerable Extent, How The World Is Used.
World
Eating
Used
To Define Knowledge As Merely Empirical Is To Limit One's Ability To Know; It Enfeebles One's Ability To Feel And Think.
Thinking
Limits
Ability
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
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
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
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
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 Live Beyond Words, As Also We Live Beyond Computation And Beyond Theory.
Theory
Computation
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
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
It's The Impeded Stream That Sings
Wisdom
Streams
If A Healthy Soil Is Full Of Death, It Is Also Full Of Life: Worms, Fungi, Microorganisms Of All Kinds ... Given Only The Health Of The Soil, Nothing That Dies Is Dead For Very Long.
Life
Death
Long
... 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
Where Is Our Comfort But In The Free, Uninvolved, Finally Mysterious Beauty And Grace Of This World That We Did Not Make, That Has No Price? Where Is Our Sanity But There? Where Is Our Pleasure But In Working And Resting Kindly In The Presence Of This World? (pg. 215, Economy And Pleasure)
Grace
Comfort
World
Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer
Computer
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
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
We Are Living In The Most Destructive And, Hence, The Most Stupid Period Of The History Of Our Species.
Stupid
Periods
Species
There Are Some Things The Arrogant Mind Does Not See; It Is Blinded By Its Vision Of What It Desires.
Mind
Vision
Desire
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
[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
If We Represent Knowledge As A Tree, We Know That Things That Are Divided Are Yet Connected. We Know That To Observe The Divisions And Ignore The Connections Is To Destroy The Tree.
Educational
Tree
Connections
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
How Joyful To Be Together, Alone As When We First Were Joined In Our Little House By The River Long Ago, Except That Now We Know Each Other, As We Did Not Then; And Now Instead Of Two Stories Fumbling To Meet, We Belong To One Story That The Two, Joining, Made. And Now We Touch Each Other With The Tenderness Of Mortals, Who Know Themselves
Soulmate
Long Ago
Two
Like The Water Of A Deep Stream, Love Is Always Too Much. We Did Not Make It. Though We Drink Till We Burst, We Cannot Have It All, Or Want It All. In Its Abundance It Survives Our Thirst. In The Evening We Come Down To The Shore To Drink Our Fill, And Sleep, While It Flows Through The Regions Of The Dark. It Does Not Hold Us, Except We Keep Returning To Its Rich Waters Thirsty. We Enter, Willing To Die, Into The Commonwealth Of Its Joy.
Sleep
Dark
Love Is
Anybody Interested In Solving, Rather Than Profiting From, The Problems Of Food Production And Distribution Will See That In The Long Run The Safest Food Supply Is A Local Food Supply, Not A Supply That Is Dependent On A Global Economy. Nations And Regions Within Nations Must Be Left Free And Should Be Encouraged To Develop The Local Food Economies That Best Suit Local Needs And Local Conditions.
Running
Long
Suits
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.
Life
Believe
Redemption
Laugh. Laughter Is Immeasurable. Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All The Facts.
Laughter
Laughing
Facts
The Country Where He Lives Is Haunted By The Ghost Of An Old Forest. In The Cleared Fields Where He Gardens And Pastures His Horses It Stood Once, And Will Return. There Will Be A Resurrection Of The Wild. Already It Stands In Wait At The Pasture Fences.
Country
Horse
Past
In The Loss Of Skill, We Lose Stewardship; In Losing Stewardship We Lose Fellowship; We Become Outcasts From The Great Neighborhood Of Creation. It Is Possible - As Our Experience In This Good Land Shows - To Exile Ourselves From Creation, And To Ally Ourselves With The Principle Of Destruction - Which Is, Ultimately, The Principle Of Nonentity. It Is To Be Willing In General For Being To Not-be. And Once We Have Allied Ourselves With That Principle, We Are Foolish To Think That We Can Control The Results. (pg. 303, The Gift Of Good Land)
Loss
Thinking
Land
When Humans Act Like Animals, They Become The Most Dangerous Of Animals To Themselves And Other Humans, And This Is Because Of Another Critical Difference Between Humans And Animals: Whereas Animals Are Usually Restrained By The Limits Of Physical Appetites, Humans Have Mental Appetites That Can Be Far More Gross And Capacious Than Physical Ones. Only Humans Squander And Hoard, Murder And Pillage Because Of Notions.
Animal
Differences
Limits
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
A Corporation, Essentially, Is A Pile Of Money To Which A Number Of Persons Have Sold Their Moral Allegiance.
Numbers
Corporations
Moral
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
The Soil Under The Grass Is Dreaming Of A Young Forest, And Under The Pavement The Soil Is Dreaming Of Grass.
Dream
Pavement
Soil
Again I Resume The Long Lesson: How Small A Thing Can Be Pleasing, How Little In This Hard World It Takes To Satisfy The Mind And Bring It To Its Rest.
Long
Mind
World
At Night Make Me One With The Darkness In The Morning Make Me One With The Light.
Morning
Night
Light
You Have To Be Able To Imagine Lives That Are Not Yours.
Able
Imagine
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
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
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
We Must See That It Is Foolish, Sinful And Suicidal To Destroy The Health Of Nature For The Sake Of An Economy That Is Really Not An Economy At All But Merely A Financial System, One That Is Unnatural, Undemocratic, Sacrilegious, And Ephemeral.
Suicidal
Ephemeral
Sake
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 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
Night
The Connections Between People And Land Are Dangerously Oversimplified And Mainly Technological.
Land
People
Connections
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.


Trending Author
Ginnifer Goodwin
Wolfman Jack
Archie Shepp
David Brin
Emmanuelle Beart
Giulio Andreotti
Category
Information