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Wendell Berry Quotes - Page 10

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

It is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

It is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

Nature, Humility, Animal

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.20, Counterpoint

Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.

Answers, Plant, Asks

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front". Book by Wendell Berry, 1970.

Eating is an agricultural act.

Agriculture, Environment, Eating

Wendell Berry (2010). “Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Large Print 16pt)”, p.282, ReadHowYouWant.com

You cannot affirm the power plant and condemn the smokestack, or affirm the smoke and condemn the cough

Rivers, Environmental, Affirmation

How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry-between say, bombing and strip mining, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional and in industry it is "accepted" as a "trade-off." Were the catastrophes of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez episodes of war or of peace? They were in fact, peacetime acts of aggression, intentional to the extent that the risks were known and ignored.

War, Differences, Risk

The country where he lives is haunted by the ghost of an old forest. In the cleared fields where he gardens and pastures his horses it stood once, and will return. There will be a resurrection of the wild. Already it stands in wait at the pasture fences.

Country, Horse, Past

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.93, Counterpoint Press

If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared. (pg. 59, "Racism and the Economy")

Real, Animal, Air

Wendell Berry (2010). “The Hidden Wound”, p.129, Counterpoint Press

A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymuosly in the life of some ex-student's grandchild.

Teacher, Grandchildren, May

"What Are People For?". Book by Wendell Berry, 1990.

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.

Reading, Years, Grandfather

Wendell Berry (2009). “Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food”, p.74, Counterpoint Press

Thinking is the most overrated human activity.

Thinking, Overrated, Humans

A viable neighborhood is a community: and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common.

Community, Environmental, Common

Wendell Berry (2001). “In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World”

If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down to the world? ...how it might, because it could know its own creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?

Fate, Love Is, Men

Never forget: We are alive within mysteries.

Life, Alive, Never Forget

"Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition". Book by Wendell Berry, 2000.

If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life: worms, fungi, microorganisms of all kinds ... Given only the health of the soil, nothing that dies is dead for very long.

Life, Death, Long

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

Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call "the economy" or "the free market" is less and less distinguishable from warfare.

Warfare, Economy, Candor

"The Failure of War" by Wendell Berry, www.yesmagazine.org. November 5, 2001.

A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us.

Home, Garden, Practice

Wendell Berry (2017). “The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry”, p.61, Penguin UK

It gets darker and darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.

Jesus, Born

I'd rather rely on mother nature's wisdom than man's cleverness

Mother, Men, Cleverness

In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.

World, Flesh, Healthcare

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.9, Counterpoint

Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible... Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and see if you recognize your neighborhood. The right local questions and answers will be the right global ones. The Amish question, what will this do to our community? tends toward the right answer for the world.

Taken, Thinking, Space

Perhaps all the good that ever has come here has come because people prayed it into the world.

People, World

Wendell Berry (2001). “Jayber Crow: A Novel”, p.283, Counterpoint Press

There's a world of difference . . . between that information to which we now presumably have access by way of computers, libraries, and the rest of it, great stockpiles of data, and the knowledge that people have in their bones by which they do good work and live good lives.

Life, Data, Differences

The only true and effective "operator's manual for spaceship earth" is not a book that any human will ever write; it is hundreds of thousands of local cultures.

Book, Writing, Culture

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth”, p.152, Counterpoint Press

You can't live entirely alone. You have to have some kind of a support system.

Support Systems, Support, Kind

"Singing to Keep the Mind Awake: Interview with Wendell Berry". Interview with Birkin Gilmore, poems.com. 2007.

We can grow good wheat and make good bread only if we understand that we do not live by bread alone.

Bread, Wheat, Live By

Wendell Berry (2001). “In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World”

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