Think Little: Essays (Counterpoints Series)

by Wendell Berry

THE HILL IS like an old woman,

AS I SLOWLY fill with the knowledge of this place, and sink into it, I come to the sense that my life here is inexhaustible, that its possibilities lie rich behind and ahead of me, that when I am dead it will not be used up.

There is some intransigent destructiveness in us.

Take today for what it is,

Let it be enough.

there is in the lives of the animals and birds a great peacefulness.

Though they have no Sundays, their days are full of sabbaths.

they communicated a sense of domestic integrity, the serenity of living within order.

not only peacefulness,

there is joy.

did a backward turn in the air, a loop-the-loop.

It could only have been a gesture of pure exuberance, of joy

The movement was incredibly beautiful, at once exultant and stately, a benediction on the evening and on the river and on me.

EVERY MAN IS followed by a shadow which is his death – dark, featureless, and mute.

He sees his source and his destiny, and they are acceptable to him.

He becomes the follower of what pursued him. What hounded his track becomes his companion.