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.

The world is not given by our fathers but borrowed from our children.

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.

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.

We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.

Under the pavement the dirt is dreaming of grass.

You can't be a critic by simply being a griper. One has also to search out the examples of good work.