There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the interconnectedness of human relationships and our bond with nature.
Wendell Berry's quote reflects on the moments of generosity we experience, suggesting that these instances help us realize our profound connection not only with each other but also with the world around us. It emphasizes that our lives are intricately woven together, reminding us that our existence is intertwined with the lives of others and the natural environment, shaping our experiences and interactions.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about community service to emphasize togetherness.
We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
In general-like not just in fiction but in life-it doesn't work out well when someone imagines someone else as a manic pixie dream girl or an Edward Cullen or anything other than a full, complex human being. That said, while I've tried to reflect that in my books, I don't think I've always succeeded, because I am always running up against my own insufficiencies and biases etc.
and if anybody asks me is it easy to forget I'll say it is easily done, you just pick anyone, and pretend that you never have met
Do things for others and you'll find your self-consciousness evaporating like morning dew.
People tend to have one of three 'styles' of interaction. There are takers, who are always trying to serve themselves; matchers, who are always trying to get equal benefit for themselves and others; and givers, who are always trying to help people.
It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.
Once you have a genuine sense of concern for others, there’s no room for cheating, bullying or exploitation.
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