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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.
-Wendell Berry
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Under The Rule Of

Wendell Berry
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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Two
Oil
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It Is Understood That Nonhuman Creatures Adapt To Their Places Or They Don't Live. And For Some Reason That I Can't Figure Out, Even The Biologists Have Excused Our Own Species From That Obligation. I Think There's Going To Be A Biological Penalty To Be Paid For That Eventually.
Thinking
Reason
Figures
The Ecological Principle In Agriculture Is To Connect The Genius Of The Place, To Fit The Farming To The Farm.
Agriculture
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Genius
To Be Sane In A Mad Time Is Bad For The Brain, Worse For The Heart.
Heart
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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
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Night
The World Is Not Given By Our Fathers But Borrowed From Our Children.
Children
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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
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We Cannot Know The Whole Truth, Which Belongs To God Alone, But Our Task Nevertheless Is To Seek To Know What Is True.
Tasks
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Whole
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
[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
Battle With Unconditioned Breath The Unconditioned Air. Shun Electric Wire. Communicate Slowly. Live A Three-dimensional Life; Stay Away From Screens.
Air
Battle
Wire
The Connections Between People And Land Are Dangerously Oversimplified And Mainly Technological.
Land
People
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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 Soil Is The Great Connector Of Our Lives, The Source And Destination Of All.
Journey
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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
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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
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
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
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
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
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
I Hear From Readers A Good Deal, And I Try To Answer Every Letter. I Think, Because Of My Commitment To Issues Of Conservation And Good Agriculture And Peaceableness, They Find Something Hopeful In My Work.
Commitment
Thinking
Agriculture
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
Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias. Say That Your Main Crop Is The Forest That You Did Not Plant, That You Will Not Live To Harvest.
Forests
Harvest
Plant
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
The Industrial Mind Is A Mind Without Compunction; It Simply Accepts That People, Ultimately, Will Be Treated As Things And That Things, Ultimately, Will Be Treated As Garbage. (a Defense Of The Family Farm, 1986)
People
Mind
Defense
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
The Fertility Cycle Is A Cycle Entirely Of Living Creatures Passing Again And Again Through Birth, Growth, Maturity, Death, And Decay.
Maturity
Growth
Decay
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
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
So, Friends, Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute...give Your Approval To All You Cannot Understand...ask The Questions That Have No Answers. Put Your Faith In Two Inches Of Humus That Will Build Under The Trees Every Thousand Years...laugh. Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All The Facts....practice Resurrection.
Years
Practice
Two
We Could Say That The Human Race Is A Great Coauthorship In Which We Are Collaborating With God And Nature In The Making Of Ourselves And One Another. From This There Is No Escape. We May Collaborate Either Well Or Poorly Or We May Refuse To Collaborate, But Even To Refuse To Collaborate Is To Exert An Influence And To Affect The Quality Of The Product. This Is Only A Way Of Saying That By Ourselves We Have No Meaning And No Dignity; By Ourselves We Are Outside The Human Definition, Outside Our Identity.
Nature
Race
Quality
The Music, While It Lasted, Brought A New World Into Being.
World
New World
This Massive Ascendancy Of Corporate Power Over Democratic Process Is Probably The Most Ominous Development Since The End Of World War Ii, And For The Most Part "the Free World" Seems To Be Regarding It As Merely Normal.
War
Development
World
Do Not Tax Your Life With Forethought Of Grief.
Grief
Taxes
Forethought
Invest In The Millenium.
If We Are Looking For Insurance Against Want And Oppression, We Will Find It Only In Our Neighbors' Prosperity And Goodwill And, Beyond That, In The Good Health Of Our Worldly Places, Our Homelands. If We Were Sincerely Looking For A Place Of Safety, For Real Security And Success, Then We Would Begin To Turn To Our Communities - And Not The Communities Simply Of Our Human Neighbors But Also Of The Water, Earth, And Air, The Plants And Animals, All The Creatures With Whom Our Local Life Is Shared. (pg. 59, "racism And The Economy")
Real
Animal
Air
Especially Among Christians In Positions Of Wealth And Power, The Idea Of Reading The Gospels And Keeping Jesus' Commandments As Stated Therein Has Been Replaced By A Curious Process Of Logic. According To This Process, People First Declare Themselves To Be Followers Of Christ, And Then They Assume That Whatever They Say Or Do Merits The Adjective "christian".
Christian
Jesus
Reading
We 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
We Are Far More Concerned About The Desecration Of The Flag Than We Are About The Desecration Of Our Land.
Land
Flags
Environment
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
It's Mighty Hard Right Now To Think Of Anything That's Precious That Isn't Endangered. There Are No Sacred And Unsacred Places; There Are Only Sacred And Desecrated Places. My Belief Is That The World And Our Life In It Are Conditional Gifts.
Thinking
Sacred
World
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
The Incarnate Word Is With Us, Is Still Speaking, Is Present Always, Yet Leaves No Sign But Everything That Is.
Garden
Stills
Analogies Have Tied Things Together For Me, Personally. The Fundamental One For Me Is The Analogy Between Your Relationship To Your Spouse And Your Relationship To Your Place. Both Need To Be A Settled Commitment And Both Involve Continuous Learning And Adjusting.
Commitment
Together
Needs
What Leads To Peace Is Not Violence But Peaceableness, Which Is Not Passivity, But An Alert, Informed, Practiced, And Active State Of Being.
Violence
States
Active
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
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
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
If The Crop Of Any One Year Was All, A Man Would Have To Cut His Throat Every Time It Hailed.
Cutting
Men
Years
A Man Who Does Not Ask To Much Become The Promise Of His Land. His Marriage Married To His Place, He Waits And Does Not Stray.
Men
Land
Waiting
The Earth Is What We All Have In Common.
Nature
Earth Day
Environmental
Returning From The Wilderness A Man Becomes A Restorer Of Order, A Preserver. He Sees The Truth, Recognizes His True Heir, Honors His Forbears And His Heritage, And Gives His Blessing To His Successors. He Embodies The Passing Of Human Time, Living And Dying Within The Human Limits Of Grief And Joy.
Grief
Blessing
Men
Under The Rule Of The "free Market" Ideology, We Have Gone Through Two Decades Of An Energy Crisis Without An Effective Energy Policy. Because Of An Easy And Thoughtless Reliance On Imported Oil, We Have No Adequate Policy For The Conservation Of Gasoline And Other Petroleum Products. We Have No Adequate Policy For The Development Or Use Of Other, Less Harmful Forms Of Energy. We Have No Adequate System Of Public Transportation.
Two
Oil
Energy
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
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
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
There Comes . . . A Longing Never To Travel Again Except On Foot.
Journey
Feet
Hiking
And In Some Of The People Of The Town And Community Surrounding It, One Of The Characteristic Diseases Of The Twentieth Century Was Making Its Way: The Suspicion That They Would Be Greatly Improved If They Were Somewhere Else.
Somewhere Else
People
Community
The 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
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
Without Prosperous Local Economies, The People Have No Power And The Land No Voice.
Land
Voice
People
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
Don't Own So Much Clutter That You Will Be Relieved To See Your House Catch Fire.
Fire
House
Relieved
For A Time I Rest In The Grace Of The World, And Am Free.
Grace
World
Still Waters
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
The Life We Want Is Not Merely The One We Have Chosen And Made. It Is The One We Must Be Choosing And Making
Want
Made
Chosen
You Can't Be A Critic By Simply Being A Griper. One Has Also To Search Out The Examples Of Good Work.
Example
Good Work
Critics
You Can't Live Entirely Alone. You Have To Have Some Kind Of A Support System.
Support Systems
Support
Kind
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.
Sunday
Dancing
Cedars
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
You Mustn’t Wish For Another Life. You Mustn’t Want To Be Somebody Else. What You Must Do Is This: “rejoice Evermore. Pray Without Ceasing. In Everything Give Thanks.” I Am Not All The Way Capable Of So Much, But Those Are The Right Instructions.
Giving
Wish
Way
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 You Start A Conversation With The Assumption That You Are Right Or That You Must Win, Obviously It Is Difficult To Talk.
Winning
Assumption
Resolution
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
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
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
There’s Nothing Under The Ground That’s Worth More Than The Little Layer Of Topsoil Sitting On Top Of It.
Sitting
Littles
Layers
To Love Anything Good, At Any Cost, Is A Bargain.
Cost
Bargains
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.
Art
Work
Names
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
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
The Line That Connects The Bombing Of Civilian Populations To The Mountain Removed By Strip Mining ... To The Tortured Prisoner Seems To Run Pretty Straight. We're Living, It Seems, In The Culmination Of A Long Warfare - Warfare Against Human Beings, Other Creatures And The Earth Itself.
Running
Long
Mountain
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
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
Corn And Bean People, I'm Afraid, Have Extremely Specialized Minds.
People
Mind
Corn
I'd Rather Rely On Mother Nature's Wisdom Than Man's Cleverness
Mother
Men
Cleverness
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
In Health The Flesh Is Graced, The Holy Enters The World.
World
Flesh
Healthcare
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
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.
Land
Disease
Poverty
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
The Road Is A Word, Conceived Elsewhere And Laid Across The Country In The Wound Prepared For It: A Word Made Concrete And Thrust Among Us.
Country
Made
Concrete
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
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
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
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
The Rule, Acknowledged Or Not, Seems To Be That If We Have Great Power We Must Use It. We Would Use A Steam Shovel To Pick Up A Dime. We Have Experts Who Can Prove There Is No Other Way To Do It.
Experts
Dimes
Use
We Will Instead Have To Measure Our Economy By The Health Of The Ecosystems And Human Communities Where We Do Our Work.
Ecosystems
Community
Environmental
A Teacher's Major Contribution May Pop Out Anonymuosly In The Life Of Some Ex-student's Grandchild.
Teacher
Grandchildren
May
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
Love Changes, And In Change Is True.
Individualism Is Going Around These Days In Uniform, Handing Out The Party Line On Individualism.
Party
Lines
Uniforms
We Have Neglected The Truth That A Good Farmer Is A Craftsman Of The Highest Order, A Kind Of Artist.
Artist
Order
Kind
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
Our Most Serious Problem, Perhaps, Is That We Have Become A Nation Of Fantasists. We Believe, Apparently, In The Infinite Availability Of Finite Resources.
Nature
Believe
Animal
History Leaves No Doubt That Among Of The Most Regrettable Crimes Committed By Human Beings Have Been Committed By Those Human Beings Who Thought Of Themselves As Civilized. What, We Must Ask, Does Our Civilization Possess That Is Worth Defending? One Thing Worth Defending, I Suggest, Is The Imperative To Imagine The Lives Of Beings Who Are Not Ourselves And Are Not Like Ourselves: Animals, Plants, Gods, Spirits, People Of Other Countries, Other Races, People Of The Other Sex, Places And Enemies.
Country
Sex
Animal
It Is Not From Ourselves That We Learn To Be Better Than We Are.
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
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
There Are Endless Ways To Amuse Oneself And Be Idle, And Most Of Them Lie Outside The Woods. I Assume That When A Man Goes To The Woods He Goes Because He Needs To. I Think He Is Drawn To The Wilderness Much As He Is Drawn To A Woman: It Is, In Its Way, His Opposite. It Is As Far As Possible Unlike His Home Or His Work Or Anything He Will Ever Manufacture. For That Reason He Can Take From It A Solace-an Understanding Of Himself, Of What He Needs And What He Can Do Without-such As He Can Find Nowhere Else.
Lying
Home
Men
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
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
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
The Grower Of Trees, The Gardener, The Man Born To Farming, Whose Hands Reach Into The Ground And Sprout, To Him The Soil Is A Divine Drug. He Enters Into Death Yearly, And Comes Back Rejoicing. He Has Seen The Light Lie Down In The Dung Heap, And Rise Again In The Corn.
Lying
Men
Garden
I Don't Think I Had Even Begun To Have An Idea Where I Was Going, But Wherever It Was, That Was Where I Wanted To Go.
Thinking
Ideas
Wanted
If You Grow A Garden You Are Going To Shed Some Sweat, And You Are Going To Spend Some Time Bent Over; You Will Experience Some Aches And Pains. But It Is In The Willingness To Accept This Discomfort That We Strike The Most Telling Blow Against The Power Plants And What They Represent.
Time
Pain
Acceptance
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
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
And If We Ask What Are The Cultural Resources That Can Inform And Sustain A Proper Creaturely And Stewardly Awareness Of The Lives In A Farmer's Keeping, I Believe That We Will Find Them Gathered Under The Heading Of Husbandry.
Believe
Awareness
Resources
We Can Grow Good Wheat And Make Good Bread Only If We Understand That We Do Not Live By Bread Alone.
Bread
Wheat
Live By
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
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
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
The Acquisition Of Knowledge Always Involves The Revelation Of Ignorance-almost Is The Revelation Of Ignorance.
Ignorance
Knowledge
Acquisition
When The Mind's An Empty Room The Clear Days Come.
Empty Rooms
Mind
Clear Day
We Learn From Our Gardens To Deal With The Most Urgent Question Of The Time: How Much Is Enough?
Time
Learning
Garden
Sit And Be Still Until In The Time Of No Rain You Hear Beneath The Dry Wind's Commotion In The Trees The Sound Of Flowing Water Among The Rocks, A Stream Unheard Before, And You Are Where Breathing Is Prayer.
Prayer
Rain
Rocks
It Is Impossible To Prefigure The Salvation Of The World In The Same Language By Which The World Has Been Dismembered And Defaced.
World
Impossible
Language
Perhaps All The Good That Ever Has Come Here Has Come Because People Prayed It Into The World.
People
World
The Presence Of The Present Has Become Insistent, Undeniable, And I Dare Not Look Away.
Looks
Dare
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 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
If You Don't Know Where You Are, You Don't Know Who You Are.
Journey
Hiking
Where We Come
At The Window He Sits And Looks Out, Musing On The River, A Little Brown Hen Duck Paddling Upstream Among The Windwaves Close To The Far Bank. What He Has Understood Lies Behind Him Like A Road In The Woods. He Is A Wilderness Looking Out At The Wild.
Lying
Rivers
Ducks
The Latest Technology Is Not Always Good For Anything Except To The Producers Of The Technology.
Technology
Producers
Latest Technology
Let Me Say And Not Mourn: The World Lives In The Death Of Speech And Sings There.
World
Speech
Let Me
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
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 Difference Between A Path And A Road Is Not Only The Obvious One. A Path Is Little More Than A Habit That Comes With Knowledge Of A Place. It Is A Sort Of Ritual Of Familiarity. As A Form, It Is A Form Of Contact With A Known Landscape. It Is Not Destructive. It Is The Perfect Adaptation, Through Experience And Familiarity, Of Movement To Place; It Obeys The Natural Contours; Such Obstacles As It Meets It Goes Around.
Differences
Perfect
Movement
Our Land Passes In And Out Of Our Bodies Just As Our Bodies Pass In And Out Of Our Land
Land
Body
How Would You Describe The Difference Between Modern War And Modern Industry-between Say, Bombing And Strip Mining, Or Between Chemical Warfare And Chemical Manufacturing? The Difference Seems To Be Only That In War The Victimization Of Humans Is Directly Intentional And In Industry It Is "accepted" As A "trade-off." Were The Catastrophes Of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, And The Exxon Valdez Episodes Of War Or Of Peace? They Were In Fact, Peacetime Acts Of Aggression, Intentional To The Extent That The Risks Were Known And Ignored.
War
Differences
Risk
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
And Having Thoughtlessly Polluted Our Streams And Rivers, We Have Seen In Recent Years A Rapidly Growing Market For Bottled Drinking Water. I Am Sure That Some Will Say That A Rapidly Growing Market For Water Is "good For The Economy," And Most Of Us Are Still Affluent Enough To Pay The Cost. Nevertheless, It Is A Considerable Cost That We Are Now Paying For Drinkable Water, Which We Once Had In Plentiful Supply At Little Cost Or None At All. And The Increasing Of The Cost Suggests That The Time May Come When The Cost Will Be Unaffordable.
Drinking
Years
Rivers
Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias.
Plant
Millennium
A Farmer's Market Is Worth More Than Everything I've Written.
Family
Farmers
Written
When Despair For The World Grows In Me And I Wake In The Night At The Least Sound In Fear Of What My Life And My Children's Lives May Be, I Go And Lie Down Where The Wood Drake Rests In His Beauty On The Water, And The Great Heron Feeds. I Come Into The Peace Of Wild Things Who Do Not Tax Their Lives With Forethought Of Grief. I Come Into The Presence Of Still Water. And I Feel Above Me The Day-blind Stars Waiting With Their Light. For A Time I Rest In The Grace Of The World, And Am Free.
Nature
Stars
Children
You Cannot Devalue The Body And Value The Soul Or Value Anything Else.
Soul
Body
Devalue
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
The "developed" Nations Had Given To The "free Market" The Status Of A God, And Were Sacrificing To It Their Farmers, Farmlands, And Communities, Their Forests, Wetlands, And Prairies, Their Ecosystems And Watersheds. They Had Accepted Universal Pollution And Global Warming As Normal Costs Of Doing Business.
Sacrifice
Ecosystems
Community
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
The Freedom Of Affluence Opposes And Contradicts The Freedom Of Community Life.
Community
Affluence
As I Understand It, I Am Being Paid Only For My Work In Arranging The Words; My Property Is That Arrangement. The Thoughts In This Book, On The Contrary, Are Not Mine. They Came Freely To Me, And I Give Them Freely Away. I Have No "intellectual Property," And I Think That All Claimants To Such Property Are Theives.
Book
Thinking
Giving
The Wild Rose” – By Wendell Berry Sometimes, Hidden From Me In Daily Custom And In Ritual I Live By You Unaware, As If By The Beating Of My Heart. Suddenly You Flare Again In My Sight A Wild Rose At The Edge Of The Thicket Where Yesterday There Was Only Shade And I Am Blessed And Choose Again, That Which I Chose Before.
Blessed
Heart
Wild Roses
A Significant Part Of The Pleasure Of Eating Is In One’s Accurate Consciousness Of The Lives And The World From Which Food Comes.
Food
World
Consciousness
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
To Mind Being Disliked By A Woman You Don’t Desire And Are Not Married To Is Yet Another Serious Failure Of Common Sense.
Common Sense
Mind
Desire
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
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
If, On The Other Hand, Conservationists Are Willing To Insist On Having The Best Food, Produced In The Best Way, As Close To Their Homes As Possible, And If They Are Willing To Learn To Judge The Quality Of Food And Food Production, Then They Are Going To Give Economic Support To An Entirely Different Kind Of Land Use In An Entirely Different Landscape. This Landscape Will Have A Higher Ratio Of Caretakers To Acres, Of Care To Use. It Will Be At Once More Domestic And More Wild Than The Industrial Landscape.
Home
Land Use
Hands
In Losing Stewardship We Lose Fellowship; We Become Outcasts From The Great Neighborhood Of Creation.
Environmental
Fellowship
Losing
We Live Beyond Words, As Also We Live Beyond Computation And Beyond Theory.
Theory
Computation
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 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
Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer
Computer
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
The Christian Gospel Is A Summons To Peace, Calling For Justice Beyond Anger, Mercy Beyond Justice, Forgiveness Beyond Mercy, Love Beyond Forgiveness.
Christian
Justice
Calling
We Are Destroying Our Country - I Mean Our Country Itself, Our Land. This Is A Terrible Thing To Know, But It Is Not A Reason For Despair Unless We Decide To Continue The Destruction. If We Decide To Continue The Destruction, That Will Not Be Because We Have No Other Choice. This Destruction Is Not Necessary. It Is Not Inevitable, Except That By Our Submissiveness We Make It So.
Country
Mean
Land
What Could Be More Superstitious Than The Idea That Money Brings Forth Food?
Ideas
Superstitious
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
The World Is Whole Beyond Human Knowing.
Life
Knowing
World
It's The Impeded Stream That Sings
Wisdom
Streams
You Can't Know Where Life Will Take You, But You Can Commit To A Direction
Commit
Knows
There Are No Unsacred Places; There Are Only Sacred Places And Desecrated Places.
Sacred
Sacred Places
Gathering Places
Once Plants And Animals Were Raised Together On The Same Farm - Which Therefore Neither Produced Unmanageable Surpluses Of Manure, To Be Wasted And To Pollute The Water Supply, Nor Depended On Such Quantities Of Commercial Fertilizer. The Genius Of American Farm Experts Is Very Well Demonstrated Here: They Can Take A Solution And Divide It Neatly Into Two Problems.
Animal
Two
Water
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
That We Should Have An Agriculture Based As Much On Petroleum As The Soil-that We Need Petroleum Exactly As Much As We Need Food And Must Have It Before We Can Eat-may Seem Absurd. It Is Absurd. It Is Nevertheless True.
Should Have
Land
Agriculture
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
I Go Among Trees And Sit Still. All My Stirring Becomes Quiet Around Me Like Circles On Water. My Tasks Lie In Their Places Where I Left Them, Asleep Like Cattle... Then What I Am Afraid Of Comes. I Live For A While In Its Sight. What I Fear In It Leaves It, And The Fear Of It Leaves Me. It Sings, And I Hear Its Song.
Song
Lying
Sight
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
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
To Cherish What Remains Of The Earth And To Foster Its Renewal Is Our Only Legitimate Hope Of Survival.
Nature
Garden
Earth Day
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
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
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
A Good Community Insures Itself By Trust, By Good Faith And Good Will, By Mutual Help. A Good Community, In Other Words, Is A Good Local Economy.
Mutual Help
Community
Helping
Never Forget: We Are Alive Within Mysteries.
Life
Alive
Never Forget
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
The Worst Example Of Rural Poverty Is That Of Migrant Farm Workers. They Have No Permanent Jobs, So They Have No Equity In The Places Where They Work. They're Not Shareholders, Let Alone Entrepreneurs. They're Not Small Farmers, They're Not Market Gardeners, They're Just Temporary - Uprooted, Isolated, Easily Exploitable People.
Jobs
People
Entrepreneur
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
Why Should Conservationists Have A Positive Interest In... Farming? There Are Lots Of Reasons, But The Plainest Is: Conservationists Eat.
Farming
Reason
Should
Thinking Is The Most Overrated Human Activity.
Thinking
Overrated
Humans
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 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
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 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
Government
Needs
Reverence Makes It Possible To Be Whole, Though Ignorant. It Is The Wholeness Of Understanding.
Respect
Understanding
Ignorant
...i Was A Young Man. I Hardly Knew What I Knew, Let Alone What I Was Going To Know.
Men
Young
Knows
The Only Time I've Been Arrested Was In Opposing The Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant In Indiana. That Was In 1979.
Nuclear
Indiana
Hills
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
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
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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