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Wendell Berry Quotes - Page 13

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

To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic plants and animals. And so it appears that most

To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic plants and animals. And so it appears that most and perhaps all of industrial agriculture's manifest failures are the result of an attempt to make the land produce without husbandry.

Husband, Animal, Land

Wendell Berry (2009). “Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food”, p.75, Counterpoint Press

History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. In a sense, nothing that was ever lost in Port William ever has been replaced. In another sense, nothing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings.

Regret, Community, Forever

To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, and Community)

Thinking, Order, Land

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.192, Counterpoint

Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away.

Giving, Reason

Wendell Berry (2013). “This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems”, p.141, Counterpoint

In living in the world by his own will and skill, the stupidest peasant or tribesman is more competent than the most intelligent worker or technician or intellectual in a society of specialists.

Work, Intelligent, Skills

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.26, Counterpoint

You can't be a critic by simply being a griper. One has also to search out the examples of good work.

Example, Good Work, Critics

Any religion has to have a practice. When you let it go so far from practice that it just becomes a matter of talk something bad happens.

Practice, Let It Go, Matter

Wendell Berry, Morris Allen Grubbs (2007). “Conversations with Wendell Berry”, p.172, Univ. Press of Mississippi

It is therefore absurd to approach the subject of health piecemeal with a departmentalized band of specialists. A medical doctor uninterested in nutrition, in agriculture, in the wholesomeness of mind and spirit is as absurd as a farmer who is uninterested in health. Our fragmentation of this subject cannot be our cure, because it is our disease. The body cannot be whole alone. Persons cannot be whole alone. It is wrong to think that bodily health is compatible with spiritual confusion or cultural disorder, or with polluted air and water or impoverished soil.

Spiritual, Thinking, Air

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.99, Counterpoint

We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species.

Stupid, Periods, Species

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.61, Counterpoint Press

Without animals, something essential is removed from the minds of the farmers.

Animal, Mind, Essentials

"Nature as an Ally: An Interview with Wendell Berry". Interview with Sarah Leonard, www.dissentmagazine.org. Spring 2012.

If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are.

Journey, Hiking, Where We Come

I dream of a quiet man / who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows / where the rarest wildflowers / are blooming, and who goes, / and finds that he is smiling / not by his own will.

Dream, Men, Wildflowers

Wendell Berry (2013). “This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems”, p.196, Counterpoint

The more artificial a human environment becomes, the more the word ‘natural’ becomes a term of value.

Environment, Natural, Term

Wendell Berry (2017). “The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry”, p.160, Penguin UK

However destructive may be the policies of the government and the methods and products of the corporations, the root of the problem is always found to be found in private life. We must learn to see that every problem that concerns us as conservationists always leads straight to the question of how we live. The world is being destroyed, no doubt about it, by the greed of the rich and powerful. It is also being destroyed by popular demand.

Powerful, Government, Roots

Wendell Berry (1993). “Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays”, Pantheon

Obviously, if Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable inquiries, then Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in economy-which is to say, in nature and in work. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life.

Christian, Organization, Our World

In losing stewardship we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of creation.

Environmental, Fellowship, Losing

A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.

Faith, Teacher, Grandchildren

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.54, Counterpoint

Let me say and not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there.

World, Speech, Let Me

Wendell Berry (2013). “A Country of Marriage: Poems”, p.23, Counterpoint

We are living even now among punishments and ruins.

Punishment, Ruins

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.47, Counterpoint Press

We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.

Life, People, Needs

Wendell Berry (2001). “Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition”, Counterpoint Press

The form of a poem is invisible. A poem is not an "object." This is hard to accept in a mechanical age.

Age, Invisible, Accepting

Wendell Berry (2011). “Standing by Words”, p.86, Counterpoint Press

As long as we insist on relating to it strictly on our own terms-as strange to us or subject to us-the wilderness is alien, threatening, fearful. We have no choice then but to become its exploiters, and to lose, by consequence, our place in it. It is only when, by humility, openness, generosity, courage, we make ourselves able to relate to it on its terms that it ceases to be alien.

Humility, Long, Generosity

The two great aims of industrialism — replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy — seem close to fulfillment.

Technology, Hands, Two

Wendell Berry (2012). “It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture & Other Essays”, p.22, Counterpoint Press

Reverence makes it possible to be whole, though ignorant. It is the wholeness of understanding.

Respect, Understanding, Ignorant

Wendell Berry (2011). “Standing by Words”, p.90, Counterpoint Press

There is change by necessity or adaptation, and there is contrived change or novelty.

Novelty, Internet, Adaptation

Wendell Berry (2011). “Standing by Words”, p.102, Counterpoint Press

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