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Wendell Berry Quotes

All Quotes Abuse Affection Age Ambition Art Assumption Character Children Choices Christianity Commitment Community Country Culture Darkness Desire Doubt Drinking Eating Economy Energy Environment Expectations Failing Farming Feelings Food Freedom Generosity Genius Giving Giving Up Grace Greed Grief Growth Hatred Healing Heart Heaven Home House Humility Hurt Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Inspiring Jesus Journey Joy Justice Language Life Loneliness Lying Memories Military Morning Mountain Nature Past Pleasure Poverty Prayer Quality Rain Reading Responsibility Running Sacrifice Silence Simplicity Sin Soul Suffering Survival Sustainability Taxes Technology Understanding Violence Vision Waiting War Water Weakness Work Writing

Outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.

Outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.

Bread, Common, Wonder

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.311, Counterpoint

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.

Inspiring, People, Attention

Sit and be still until in the time of no rain you hear beneath the dry wind's commotion in the trees the sound of flowing water among the rocks, a stream unheard before, and you are where breathing is prayer.

Prayer, Rain, Rocks

"Given". Book by Wendell Berry, 2005.

We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.

Effort, Would Be, World

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Nature, Stars, Children

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.79, Counterpoint Press

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

Nature, Responsibility, Garden

Wendell Berry (1978). “The unsettling of America: culture & agriculture”, Random House (NY)

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.

Spiritual, Knowing, People

Wendell Berry (2012). “The Long-Legged House”, p.71, Counterpoint Press

It may be that when we no longer know... which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Real, Journey, Mind

"Standing by Words: Essays". Book by Wendell Berry, 2011.

Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

Lakes, Sea, Fishing

Wendell Berry (2004). “Citizenship Papers: Essays”, p.157, Counterpoint Press

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.

Community, Age, Care

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.70, Counterpoint

We clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us; we enter the little circle of each other's arms, and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance, and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.

Moving, Hands, Circles

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.10, Counterpoint Press

It is no more possible to live in the future than it is to live in the past. If life is not now, it is never.

Past, Life Is, Ifs

Wendell Berry (2012). “The Long-Legged House”, p.189, Counterpoint Press

Under the pavement the dirt is dreaming of grass.

Dream, Dirt, Pavement

When I rise up, let me rise up joyful like a bird. When I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf.

Regret, Fall, Bird

Wendell Berry (2011). “Farming: A Hand Book”, p.68, Counterpoint Press

We don't have a right to ask whether we're going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what's the right thing to do? What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?

Want, Succeed, Doe

"Confronting the Consequences of Runaway Capitalism". Interview with Bill Moyers, www.alternet.org. October 7, 2013.

You can't know where life will take you, but you can commit to a direction

Commit, Knows

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

Nature, Memories, Party

It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.

Thinking, Government, Needs

At night make me one with the darkness In the morning make me one with the light.

Morning, Night, Light

Wendell Berry (2009). “The Mad Farmer Poems”, p.6, Counterpoint Press

We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness. True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources. In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.

Loneliness, Wild Places, Voice

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.11, Counterpoint

The soil under the grass is dreaming of a young forest, and under the pavement the soil is dreaming of grass.

Dream, Pavement, Soil

Wendell Berry (2006). “Given: Poems”, p.4, Counterpoint

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.

Spiritual, Home, Journey

"Seeking a Spiritual Home" by Katherine Towler, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 18, 2014.

Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

Love, Dark, Shining

Wendell Berry (2005). “Hannah Coulter: A Novel”, p.51, Counterpoint Press

The miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.

Distance, Wine, Air

People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.

Lonely, Hate, Drug Use

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.61, Counterpoint

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