St. Francis of Assisi taught me that there is a wound in the Creation and that the greatest use we could make of our lives was to ask to be made a healer of it.
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?
The ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.
But perhaps when you were too obedient, and did not do openly what others did, and were quiet in church and hard-working at school, then some unknown rebellion brewed in you, doing harm to you, though how I do not understand.
It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest, there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools
The only way in which one can make endurable man's inhumanity to man, and man's destruction of his own environment, is to exemplify in your own lives man's humanity to man and man's reverence for the place in which he lives.