We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.

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. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years.

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.

The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.

But the only possible guarantee of the future is responsible behavior in the present.

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?

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