A liberal education rests on the assumption that nature and human nature do not change very much or very fast and that one therefore needs to understand the past.

In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.

There is a religious principle: Love thy neighbour as thyself. But it's also an economic asset. If you've got a neighbour, you've got help, and this implies another limit. If you want to have neighbours, you can't have a limitless growth economy. You have to prefer to have a neighbour rather than to own your neighbour farm.

I took her into bed with me and propped myself up with pillows against the headboard to let her nurse. As she nursed and the milk came, she began a little low contented sort of singing. I would feel milk and love flowing from me to her as once it had flowed to me. It emptied me. As the baby fed, I seemed slowly to grow empty of myself, as if in the presence of that long flow of love even grief could not stand.

The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay.

The mercy of the world is you don't know what's going to happen.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark.