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.
It must be awful to feel you're not needed.
Hate crimes impact not just individuals but entire communities. When a family is attacked because of the color of their skin, it's not just the family that feels violated, but every resident of that neighborhood.
The United States-Israeli relationship is based on the broadest conception of American national interest in which our two nations are bound forever together by common democratic values and traditions. This will never change.
He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.
If after having been exposed to someone's presence you feel as if you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia.
It's not beauty but fine qualities, my girl, that keep a husband.
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