Lawyer

“She thought it strange and wonderful that she had been given all these to love She thought it a blessing that she had loved them to the limit of her grief at parting with them, and that grief had only deepened and clarified her love. Since her first grief had brought her fully to birth and wakefulness in this world, an unstinting compassion had moved in her, like a live stream flowing deep underground, by which she knew herself and other and the world. It was her truest self, that stream always astir inside her that was at once pity and love, knowledge and faith, forgiveness, grief, and joy. It made her fearful, and it made her unafraid.”
― Wendell Berry, Fidelity: Five Stories

“Who can tell? Together, with God’s blessing — which surely He will not withhold — you may perhaps be laying the groundwork, the foundation for a future Athens, an Athens of the South. Yes. And this young woman’s child, so soon to be born,” he added, indicating Ella with a deferential nod, “will be one of its leading citizens, the one perhaps under whom it will come to flower, a beacon for the South, a torch held out.”
― Shelby Foote, Jordan County

“But Uncle Gavin says it don't take many words to tell the sum of any human experience; that somebody has already done it in eight: He was born, he suffered and he died.”
― William Faulkner, Knight's Gambit

“But he learned what he had to, and he changed, and so he made himself exceptional.”
― Wendell Berry, Fidelity: Five Stories