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Wendell Berry Quotes - Page 15

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

That we should have an agriculture based as much on petroleum as the soil-that we need petroleum exactly as much as we need food and must have it before we can eat-may seem absurd. It is absurd. It is nevertheless true.

That we should have an agriculture based as much on petroleum as the soil-that we need petroleum exactly as much as we need food and must have it before we can eat-may seem absurd. It is absurd. It is nevertheless true.

Should Have, Land, Agriculture

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.37, Counterpoint

The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.

Country, Home, Kentucky

And if we ask what are the cultural resources that can inform and sustain a proper creaturely and stewardly awareness of the lives in a farmer's keeping, I believe that we will find them gathered under the heading of husbandry.

Believe, Awareness, Resources

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

We must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

Humility, Arrogance, Doubt

Wendell Berry (2017). “The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry”, p.30, Penguin UK

The old and honorable idea of 'vocation' is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.

Ideas, Kind, Good Work

If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.

Humble, Cutting, Boys

What would be the point of being personally whole in a dismembered society, or personally healthy in a land scalped, eroded and poisoned, or personally free in a world entirely controlled by the government or enlightened by television?

Government, Land, Healthy

What leads to peace is not violence but peaceableness, which is not passivity, but an alert, informed, practiced, and active state of being.

Violence, States, Active

Wendell Berry (2004). “Citizenship Papers: Essays”, p.32, Counterpoint Press

The only sustainable city - and this, to me, is the indispensable ideal and goal - is a city in balance with its countryside.

Cities, Goal, Balance

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

For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless.

Suffering, Sin, Endless

Annual plants are nature's emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established.

Land, Emergencies, Sound

We seem to know that international wars tend not to stop with their formal "peace treaties." We seem not to have thought enough about the difference between the large official events of political and military history and their overflow both into recognized effects and into the lives of unofficial people who suffer them.

War, Military, Differences

Source: www.neh.gov

The latest technology is not always good for anything except to the producers of the technology.

Technology, Producers, Latest Technology

"A conversation with environmental campaigner Wendell Berry". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2012.

The only time I've been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979.

Nuclear, Indiana, Hills

"'Everything Worthy is Under Fire'". Interview with Thomas P. Healy, www.counterpunch.org. November 8, 2010.

Analogies have tied things together for me, personally. The fundamental one for me is the analogy between your relationship to your spouse and your relationship to your place. Both need to be a settled commitment and both involve continuous learning and adjusting.

Commitment, Together, Needs

Source: www.neh.gov

To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we 'know' that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.

War, Heart, Terrible

Wendell Berry (2012). “It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays”, p.28, Counterpoint

The wrecking ball is characteristic of our way with materials. We 'cannot afford' to log a forest selectively, to mine without destroying topography, or to farm without catastrophic soil erosion. A production-oriented economy can indeed live in this way, but only so long as production lasts.

Erosion, Long, Environmental

Because by definition they lack any sense of mutuality or wholeness, our specializations subsist on conflict with one another. The rule is never to cooperate, but rather to follow one's own interest as far as possible. Checks and balances are all applied externally, by opposition, never by self-restraint. Labor, management, the military, the government, etc., never forbear until their excesses arouse enough opposition to force them to do so.

Military, Government, Self

The good of the whole of Creation, the world and all its creatures together, is never a consideration because it is never thought of; our culture now simply lacks the means for thinking of it.

Mean, Thinking, Together

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

The river and the garden have been the foundations of my economy here. Of the two I have liked the river best. It is wonderful to have the duty of being on the river the first and last thing every day. I have loved it even in the rain. Sometimes I have loved it most in the rain.

Rain, Garden, Two

When you are old you can look back and see yourself when you are young. It is almost like looking down from heaven. And you see yourself as a young woman, just a big girl really, half awake to the world. You see yourself happy, holding in your arms a good, decent, gentle, beloved young man with the blood keen in his veins, who before long is going to disappear, just disappear, into a storm of hate and flying metal and fire. And you just don't know it.

Girl, Hate, Men

The people who benefit from this state of affairs have been at pains to convince us that the agricultural practices and policies that have almost annihilated the farming population have greatly benefited the population of food consumers. But more and more consumers are now becoming aware that our supposed abundance of cheap and healthful food is to a considerable extent illusory.

Pain, Practice, Convince Us

The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.

Jobs, Real, Humble

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

As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live when I no longer rise in the mornings to be pleased with the green of them shining, and their shadows on the ground, and the sound of the wind in them.

Dream, Morning, Night

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.179, Counterpoint Press

We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work.

Ecosystems, Community, Environmental

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

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