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It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays

Book by Wendell Berry · 4 quotes · Heart, Affection, Break

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It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays Quotes

“One morning when he was about thirteen, Den and I were in the barn doing the before-breakfast chores. I was in the milking stall, Den in the driveway. He must have been thinking about Maury, for after a while he said, "Dad, Maury Telleen is not very tall. Did you ever notice that?" "Yes," I said. And probably I was about to tell him he should mind his manners, but he wasn't finished. He said, "But you never think of him as a little man. Did you ever notice that?" "Yes," I said. "I have noticed that.”

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“I don’t hesitate to say that damage or destruction of the land-community is morally wrong, just as Leopold did not hesitate to say so when he was composing his essay, “The Land Ethic,” in 1947. But I do not believe, as I think Leopold did not, that morality, even religious morality, is an adequate motive for good care of the land-community. The primary motive for good care and good use is always going to be affection, because affection involves us entirely. And here Leopold himself set the example. In 1935 he bought an exhausted Wisconsin farm and, with his family, began its restoration. To do this was morally right, of course, but the motive was affection. Leopold was an ecologist. He felt, we may be sure, an informed sorrow for the place in its ruin. He imagined it as it had been, as it was, and as it might be. And a profound, delighted affection radiates from every sentence he wrote about it.”

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