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Wendell Berry Quotes - Page 2

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

The mind that is not baffled, is unemployed

The mind that is not baffled, is unemployed

Mind, Baffled, Unemployed

Wendell Berry, “The Real Work”

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

Nature, Garden, Earth Day

We live the given life, and not the planned.

Given, Given Life

Wendell Berry (2013). “This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems”, p.150, Counterpoint

The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.

Teacher, Wanted, Learners

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.13, Counterpoint Press

You cannot save the land apart from the people, or the people apart from the land.

Land, People

Wendell Berry (2011). “Another Turn of the Crank: Essays”, p.56, Counterpoint Press

There is much good work to be done by every one of us and we must begin to do it.

Work, Done, Good Work

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

We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?

Time, Learning, Garden

Unexpected wonders happen, not on schedule, or when you expect or want them to happen, but if you keep hanging around, they do happen.

Schedules, Want, Unexpected

Interview with Jim Leach, www.neh.gov. May/June 2012.

We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.

Artist, Order, Kind

Wendell Berry (2010). “Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Large Print 16pt)”, p.37, ReadHowYouWant.com

There are, it seems, two muses: The Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, 'It is yet more difficult than you thought.' It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.

Real, Inspiration, Journey

"Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms". 1982.

The name of our proper connection to the earth is 'good work,' for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing.

Art, Work, Names

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

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years...Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts....Practice resurrection.

Years, Practice, Two

Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”

Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health -- and create profitable diseases and dependencies -- by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving.

Broken, Ordinary, Connections

"The Art of the Commonplace". Book by Wendell Berry, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2002.

No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality.

Acceptance, Humanity, World

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.118, Counterpoint

How joyful to be together, alone as when we first were joined in our little house by the river long ago, except that now we know each other, as we did not then; and now instead of two stories fumbling to meet, we belong to one story that the two, joining, made. And now we touch each other with the tenderness of mortals, who know themselves

Soulmate, Long Ago, Two

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.315, Counterpoint Press

Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

Practice, Track, Foxes

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.174, Counterpoint Press

In this state of total consumerism-which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves-all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.

Meaningful, Thinking, Ideas

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.85, Counterpoint

We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.

Government, Community, Doubt

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.86, Counterpoint

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Life, Grief, Generosity

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.79, Counterpoint Press

I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.

Believe, World, God Love

Thich Nhat Hanh, John Stanley, David Loy, Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim (2013). “Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth”, p.77, The Golden Sufi Center

I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.

Grief, Believe, Forever

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

Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, "to the least of these my brethren." Love is not, by its own desire, heroic. It is heroic only when compelled to be. It exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded.

Love, Humble, Desire

I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children...

Nature, Children, Father

"The Unforeseen Wilderness : An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge". Book by Wendell Berry, 1971.

You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours.

Able, Imagine

Wendell Berry, Morris Allen Grubbs (2007). “Conversations with Wendell Berry”, p.177, Univ. Press of Mississippi

The earth is what we all have in common.

Nature, Earth Day, Environmental

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.97, Counterpoint

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