Dwight Eisenhower 1961

As we peer into society's future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

New Century Club for Women, their prayer from 1923-1964

Keep us, O God, from pettiness; Let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with fault-finding and leave off self-seeking.
May we put away all pretense and meet each other face to face, without self-pity and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous.
Let us take time for all things; make us grow, calm, serene, gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses; straightforward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize it is the little things that create differences; that in the big things of life we are as one.
And may we strive to touch and to know the great common person's heart of us all, and oh, Lord God, let us not forget to be kind. Mary Stewart

Wendell Berry

There is the bad work of pride. There is also the bad work of despair - done poorly out of the failure of hope or vision.

Despair is the too-little of responsibility, as pride is the too-much.

The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.

For despair there is no forgiveness, and for pride none. Who in loneliness can forgive?

Milton

she (nature), good cateress,
Means her provision only to the good
That live according to her sober laws
And holy Temperance.

A Natural Model for the Survival of Agriculture

The earth never attempts to farm without livestock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease.
An Agricultural Testament 1940
Sir Albert Howard

1928 Book of Common Prayer

Deliver us, we beseech thee, in our several callings, from the service of mammon, that we may do the work which thou givest us to do, in truth, in beauty, and in righteousness, with singleness of heart as thy servants, and to the benefit of our fellow men..

Shaker Motto

Hands to work, hearts to God.

Aristophanes 422BC

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Wendell Berry on stewardship of the Earth

Our destructiveness has not been, and it is not, inevitable. People who use that excuse are morally incompetent, they are cowardly, and they are lazy. Humans don’t have to live by destroying the sources of their life. People can change; they can learn to do better. All of us, regardless of party, can be moved by love of our land to rise above the greed and contempt of our land’s exploiters.

Edmund Spencer

Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.
. . . . . . . . .
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; 13
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend! Mother Hubberds Tale. Line 895.


What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,
To raine in th’ aire from earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature. Muiopotmos

Beware of Darkness

Watch out now, take care
Beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night
Beware of darkness

George Harrison (not the greatest philosopher but I like these lines)

Edmund Spencer

An illustration from Edmund Spencer's The Shepherd's Calendar

We think, we believe and we know; but if we do not act on it, do we think? Do we believe? Do we know?

Christina's World

"Christina's World" is beautiful and foreboding, sublime and twisted. Christina is strong but frail and unable to reach her destination due to her own infirmities. She will perish with her home insight unless the lord of the house humbles himself and comes to rescue her.

Dostoevsky

If there is no eternal perspective then everything is permitted.

Amiel

I realize with intensity, that man in all that he does that is great and noble is only the organ of something higher than himself.

An Old Prayer

Sin's deformity is stamped upon me,
darkens my brow,
touches me with corruption:
How can I flaunt myself proudly?
Lowest abasement is my due place,
for I am less than nothing before thee.
Help me to see myself in thy sight,
then pride must wither, decay, die, perish.
Humble my heart before thee,
and replenish it with thy choicest gifts.

Isaiah 5:8

Woe to those who add house to house and field to field, until there is no more room, so that you have to live alone in the midst of the land!

Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires,

Save one; seek ye first the Kingdom of God.

Henry David Thoreau

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau went to the woods to confront what was real and to leave superficiality behind. Today man is not even aware of the superficiality of his tragic life, nor the fact that he is about to be consumed my the monster of narcissism.

Jonathan Edwards

"If every event has a cause, then so do free human choices. God is the first cause of everything, therefore God must be the cause of our free choices."

If the infinite-personal God of the Bible does not exist then all thinking is futile and all ethical judgments are null and void. We are left with the thinking of Jean Paul Sartre; "man is but a useless passion" or from Shakespear, "Life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound of fury and signifying nothing".