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Wendell Berry Quotes - Page 17

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

I took her into bed with me and propped myself up with pillows against the headboard to let her nurse. As she nursed and the milk came, she began a little low contented sort of singing. I would feel milk and love

I took her into bed with me and propped myself up with pillows against the headboard to let her nurse. As she nursed and the milk came, she began a little low contented sort of singing. I would feel milk and love flowing from me to her as once it had flowed to me. It emptied me. As the baby fed, I seemed slowly to grow empty of myself, as if in the presence of that long flow of love even grief could not stand.

Baby, Grief, Nurse

Wendell Berry (2005). “Hannah Coulter: A Novel”, p.55, Counterpoint Press

You cannot devalue the body and value the soul Or value anything else.

Soul, Body, Devalue

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.84, Counterpoint

The question before me, now that I am old, is not how to be dead, which I know from enough practice, but how to be alive, as these worn hills still tell, and some paintings of Paul Cezanne, and this mere singing wren, who thinks he's alive forever, this instant, and may be.

Thinking, Practice, Forever

Wendell Berry (2013). “This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems”, p.222, Counterpoint

If, on the other hand, conservationists are willing to insist on having the best food, produced in the best way, as close to their homes as possible, and if they are willing to learn to judge the quality of food and food production, then they are going to give economic support to an entirely different kind of land use in an entirely different landscape. This landscape will have a higher ratio of caretakers to acres, of care to use. It will be at once more domestic and more wild than the industrial landscape.

Home, Land Use, Hands

Wendell Berry (2010). “Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Large Print 16pt)”, p.88, ReadHowYouWant.com

The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.

Experts, Dimes, Use

Wendell Berry (2012). “The Long-Legged House”, p.55, Counterpoint Press

and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else.

Somewhere Else, People, Community

Do not tax your life with forethought of grief.

Grief, Taxes, Forethought

From the union of power and money, from the union of power and secrecy, from the union of government and science, from the union of government and art, from the union of science and money, from the union of ambition and ignorance, from the union of genius and war, from the union of outer space and inner vacuity, the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.

Art, War, Ambition

Wendell Berry (2009). “The Mad Farmer Poems”, p.17, Counterpoint Press

Akin to the idea that time is money is the concept, less spoken but as commonly assumed, that we may be adequately represented by money. The giving of money has thus become our characteristic virtue. But to give is not to do. The money is given in lieu of action, thought, care, time.

Ideas, Giving, Care

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.27, Counterpoint

If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his throat every time it hailed.

Cutting, Men, Years

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.150, Counterpoint Press

Beware the machinery of longevity. When a man's life is over the decent thing is for him to die. The forest does not withhold itself from death. What it gives up it takes back.

Giving Up, Men, Doe

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

The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay.

Maturity, Growth, Decay

Why should conservationists have a positive interest in... farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.

Farming, Reason, Should

Wendell Berry (2010). “Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Large Print 16pt)”, p.10, ReadHowYouWant.com

You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a little at a time.' And how long is that going to take?' I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.' That could be a long time.' I will tell you a further mystery,' he said. 'It may take longer.

Long, Answers, May

It was a country . . . that he and his people had known how to use and abuse, but not how to preserve.

Country, People, Abuse

Wendell Berry (2009). “Remembering”, p.79, Counterpoint Press

I have this love for Mattie. It was formed in me as he himself was formed. It has his shape, you might say. He fits it. He fits into it as he fits into his clothes. He will always fit into it. When he gets out of the car and I meet him and hug him, there he is, him himself, something of my very own forever, and my love for him goes all around him just as it did when he was a baby and a little boy and a young man grown.

Baby, Boys, Men

We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.

Expectations, Scary, Buckets

Wendell Berry (2005). “Hannah Coulter: A Novel”, p.139, Counterpoint Press

But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time...of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here...It is in the world, but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.

Love Is, World, Crowds

To the extent that we consume, in our present circumstances, we are guilty. To the extent that we guilty consumers are conservationists, we are absurd. But what can we do? Must we go on writing letters to politicians and donating to conservation organizations until the majority of our fellow citizens agree with us? Or can we do something directly to solve our share of the problem? I am a conservationist. I believe wholeheartedly in putting pressure on the politicians and in maintaining the conservation organizations.

Believe, Writing, Organization

The world is so full and abundant it is like a pregnant woman carrying a child in one arm and leading another by the hand. Every puddle in the lane is ringed with sipping butterflied that fly up in flutter when you walk past in the late morning on your way to get the mail.

Morning, Children, Past

Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.

Military, Finals, Defeat

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.16, Counterpoint

The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something that they do not really wish to destroy. We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue. We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do.

Country, Character, Fighting

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.201, Counterpoint

We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and for each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make. The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependant on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do.

Thinking, Waste, Obstacles

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.201, Counterpoint

This new war, like the previous one, would be a test of the power of machines against people and places; whatever its causes and justifications, it would make the world worse. This was true of that new war, and it has been true of every new war since... I knew too that this new war was not even new but was only the old one come again. And what caused it? It was caused, I thought, by people failing to love one another, failing to love their enemies.

War, People, Enemy

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

The paramount doctrine of the economic and technological euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends on innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary, that we should go on and on from one technological innovation to the next, which would cause the economy to "grow" and make everything better and better. This of course implied at every point a hatred of the past, of all things inherited and free. All things superceded in our progress of innovations, whatever their value might have been, were discounted as of no value at all.

Past, Hatred, Innovation

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