Quotes About Stewardship

If princes are indeed superior to the people in enacting laws, in organizing civil governments, in setting up new statues and ordinances, then doubtless the people are so superior in maintaining what has been instituted that they increase the glory of those who instituted them.

I am an environmentalist, but I'm not a wacko environmentalist. I believe that mankind and nature can live side-by-side for the mutual benefit of both.

The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency.

I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it.

The 'environment' is not the gift of entrepreneurs, risk takers, or investors. It is the common, inherited property of humanity.

We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.

The land is a special thing. Care for it, and it'll care for you. Not many things will do that.

Try not to burn down Aroughs, would you? Cities are rather hard to replace.

Money is a fictional thing that is supposed to go around. Hoarding it is a sin

People and land, they're the same, his father used to say. Neglect one and the other suffers eventually.

La gente y la tierra son lo mismo - solia decir su padre- si desatiendes una de las dos, la otra acaba pagando las consecuencias

Los franciscanos decimos: no poseemos nada, todo lo tenemos en uso. Él

ancestors, perhaps as friends, perhaps as foes—we do not know. Nor again do we know why they vanished, although given our species' dismal record as responsible stewards of nature, it's a decent bet that we drove them to extinction.

Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.

America, then, is only as good as the citizens of any era who choose to preserve and to nourish it for one more generation. Republics are so often lost not over centuries but within a single decade.3

There are no bad plants or bad men. There is only bad husbandry.

damage the earth is to damage your children. —WENDELL BERRY, FARMER AND POET

People down south had no idea how clean an outhouse could be if you took care of it.

Farming, I discovered, is a great and ongoing war. The farmers are continually fighting to keep nature behind the hedgerow, and nature is continually fighting to overtake the field.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

Life is not salvage to be saved out of the world, but an investment to be used in the world.

Have you ever thought that the only ugly things in this Cove are man's fault, while the beautiful things are God's work? Look at those mountains.

Our trees in our forests need protection to ensure that those cut are replanted and cutting is done wisely.

Life gives us nothing outright. It only lends. Nothing is ours to keep.