We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.

Nature is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may think.

To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.

It is a fact that the entire Kentucky River system, which the central part of the state complacently depends upon for its future water, is deteriorating rapidly because of strip mining, because of bad farming, because of industrial and agricultural pollutants, because of urban sewage. It is deteriorating, that is to say, because almost nobody cares, or cares to know, where water comes from, so long as it keeps coming.

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.

If we do not serve what coheres and endures, we serve what disintegrates and destroys.

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)