Not just self-restraint, that old killjoy, but communal restraint.

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.

It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.

Some nights in the midst of this loneliness I swung among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone.

In losing stewardship we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of creation.

Without animals, something essential is removed from the minds of the farmers.

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.