To mind being disliked by a woman you don’t desire and are not married to is yet another serious failure of common sense.
Interpretation
Caring about the opinions of someone you don't want a relationship with is illogical.
Wendell Berry's quote emphasizes the irrationality of valuing the opinions of others, particularly those we do not have romantic feelings for or are not committed to. It highlights a common human tendency to seek approval, even from those who hold no significant place in our lives, suggesting that it is a misuse of emotional energy and an example of a lack of sound judgment in interpersonal relationships.
In practice
In a discussion about self-worth, this quote can be used to remind someone to focus on their own feelings rather than others'.
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.
All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way.
Women of color have always been kind of boxed in by the idea that the more you talk about the misogyny of your own community, the more you make that community look bad.
Introverted feeling types have a wealth of warmth and enthusiasm, but they may not show it until they know someone well. They wear their warm side inside, like a fur-lined coat.
Most of the time in married life is taken up by talk.
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
We shall be free only together, black and white. We shall survive only together, black and white. We can be human only together, black and white.
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