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Wendell Berry Quotes - Page 14

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

We cannot comprehend what comprehends us.

We cannot comprehend what comprehends us.

Comprehension

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

The issue here really is not whether international trade shall be free but whether or not it makes any sense for a country - or, for that matter, a region - to destroy its own capacity to produce its own food. How can a government, entrusted with the safety and health of its people, conscientiously barter away in the name of an economic idea that people's ability to feed itself? And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free?

Country, Names, Ideas

"Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community". Book by Wendell Berry, 1993.

Geese appear high over us, / pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, / as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear / in the ancient faith: what we need / is here. And we pray, not / for new earth or heaven, but to be / quiet in heart, and in eye, / clear. What we need is here.

Sleep, Eye, Heart

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.180, Counterpoint Press

I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever. Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.

Prayer, Lying, Fall

Wendell Berry (2000). “Jayber Crow: A Novel”, Counterpoint LLC

I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?

Dream, Thinking, People

Wendell Berry (2000). “Jayber Crow: A Novel”, Counterpoint LLC

He never complained. He seemed to have no instinct for the making much of oneself that complaining requires.

Complaining, Instinct, Oneself

Wendell Berry (2000). “Jayber Crow: A Novel”, Counterpoint LLC

Willing to die you give up your will; keep still, until moved by what moves all else, you move.

Giving Up, Moving, Willing

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.166, Counterpoint Press

Those who say Islam is a warlike religion must ask if Christianity has been as well.

Peace, Islam, Christianity

A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life.

Heart, Practice, Luxury

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.250, Counterpoint

... it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an 'environmental crisis' because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, god-given world.

Drinking, Community, Environmental

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

Specialization is the great evil of civilization.

Civilization, Evil, Specialization

"Towards Home: Michael Pollan and Fritz Heag on Reviving the Domestic". Interview with Paul Schmelzer, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 16, 2013.

We conservatives bemoan the decline in values that has besieged our society. Why then should we not abhor the lack of morality involved in discharging untested chemicals into the air, ground, and water to alter and harm, to whatever degree, human life and wildlife? As a conservative, I do abhor it.

Air, Water, Degrees

The more local and settled a culture, the better it stays put, the less the damage. It is the foreigner whose road of excess leads to a desert... a man with a machine and inadequate culture... is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.

Men, Pestilence, Damage

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

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, World

Wendell Berry (2010). “Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Large Print 16pt)”, p.113, ReadHowYouWant.com

We can make ourselves whole only by accepting our partiality, by living within our limits, by being humans not by trying to be gods.

Simple, Trying, Limits

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.292, Counterpoint

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark.

Dark, Light, Knows

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.121, Counterpoint Press

You don't need to be told some things. You can sometimes tell more by a man's silence and the set of his head than by what he says.

Men, Silence, Needs

Wendell Berry (2000). “Jayber Crow: A Novel”, Counterpoint LLC

For want of a Pilate of their own, some Christians would accept a Constantine or whomever might be the current incarnation of Caesar.

Christian, Want, Might

When the self is ones exclusive subject and limit, reference and measure, one has no choice but to make a world of words.

Self, Choices, World

Wendell Berry (2011). “Standing by Words”, p.8, Counterpoint Press

A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.

Education, Mean, Order

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

The constructions of language, which is to say the constructions of thought, are formed within experience, not the other way around.

Way, Language, Construction

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

The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.

Pride, Despair, Waste

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

The chance you had is the life you've got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people's lives, ...but you mustn't wish for another life. You mustn't want to be somebody else.

People, Wish, Want

It's impossible to contemplate the life of soil very long without seeing its analogy to the life of the spirit.

Long, Analogies, Soil

The problems are our lives. In the "developed" countries, at least, the large problems occur because all of us are living either partly wrong or almost entirely wrong. It was not just the greed of corporate shareholders and the hubris of corporate executives that put the fate of Prince William Sound into one ship; it was also our demand that energy be cheap and plentiful.

Country, Fate, Greed

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.198, Counterpoint Press

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