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Wendell Berry Quotes - Page 20

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

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.

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.

Long, Strange, Aliens

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.

War, Men, Mind

Wendell Berry (2012). “The Long-Legged House”, p.81, Counterpoint Press

At home the great delight is to see the clover and grass now growing on places that were bare when we came. These small healings of the ground are my model accomplishment-everything else I do must aspire to that. While I was at that work the world gained with every move I made, and I harmed nothing.

Moving, Healing, Home

Wendell Berry (2012). “A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural”, p.43, Counterpoint Press

An agrarian mind begins with the love of fields and ramifies in good farming, good cooking & good eating

Cooking, Mind, Fields

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.241, Counterpoint

The answers to the human problems of ecology are to be found in economy. And the answers to the problems of economy are to be found in culture and character. To fail to see this is to go on dividing the world falsely between guilty producers and innocent consumers.

Character, Culture, Answers

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

So it is that the life force may take possession of a man-- so that in the end he may be possessed by something greater, no longer at all belonging to himself.

Men, May, Ends

To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in terms of money, is not acceptable because it is not realistic. I am thinking as I believe we must think if we wish to discuss the best uses of people, places, and things, and if we wish to give affection some standing in our thoughts.

Believe, Thinking, People

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth”, p.80, Counterpoint Press

To be patient in an emergency is a terrible trial.

Trials, Emergencies, Patient

"Confronting the Consequences of Runaway Capitalism". Interview with Bill Moyers, www.alternet.org. October 7, 2013.

People who blame the Bible for the modern destruction of nature have failed to see its delight in the variety and individuality of creatures and its insistence upon their holiness. But that delight-in, say, the final chapters of Job or the 104th Psalm-is far more useful to the cause of conservation than the undifferentiating abstractions of science... Reverence gives standing to creatures, and to our perception of them, just as the law gives standing to a citizen.

Jobs, Animal, Law

We need to confront honestly the issue of scale... You may need a large corporation to run an airline or to manufacture cars, but you don't need a large corporation to raise a chicken or a hog. You don't need a large corporation to process local food or local timber and market it locally.

Running, Issues, Car

Wendell Berry (2006). “The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays”, p.26, Counterpoint Press

The securest guarantee of the long-term good health of both farmland and city is, I believe, locally produced food.

Believe, Cities, Long

All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by men who have had little: the fisherman's silence receiving the river's grace, the gardener's musing on rows.

Pride, Men, Rivers

Wendell Berry (2009). “The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry”, p.29, Counterpoint Press

I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place. I find no peace or grace. We sell the world to buy fire, our way lighted by burning men.

Simple, Men, Fire

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.78, Counterpoint Press

Community, then, is an indispensable term in any discussion of the connection between people and land. A healthy community is a form that includes all the local things that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the Creation. In speaking of community, then, we are speaking of a complex connection not only among human beings or between humans and their homeland but also between human economy and nature, between forest or prairie and field or orchard, and between troublesome creatures and pleasant ones. All neighbors are included.

Land, People, Community

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

All we can do to prepare rightly for tomorrow is to do the right thing today.

Today, Tomorrow, Can Do

The world is whole beyond human knowing.

Life, Knowing, World

Thich Nhat Hanh, John Stanley, David Loy, Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim (2013). “Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth”, p.80, The Golden Sufi Center

A Sustainable Agriculture does not deplete soils or people.

Agriculture, People, Doe

Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health.

Broken, Connections, Interdependence

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.107, Counterpoint

To accept that there is nothing to do is to despair. It is to become in some fundamental way less than human. Those of us who are protesting are protesting in part for our own sake to keep ourselves whole as human beings.

Despair, Fundamentals, Sake

Education in the true sense, of course, is an enablement to serve-both the living human community in its natural household or neighborhood and the precious cultural possessions that the living community inherits or should inherit.

Community, Natural, Should

"The Needed Resurgence of Trade Schools" by Tobias Roberts, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 3, 2017.

If you eat, you are involved in agriculture.

Agriculture, Involved, Ifs

There are not enough rich and powerful people to consume the whole world; for that, the rich and powerful need the help of countless ordinary people.

Powerful, People, Ordinary

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

We can fight the global economy with a strong local economy.

Strong, Fighting, Economy

Action can only be understood in relation to place; only by staying in place can the imagination conceive or understand action in terms of consequence, of cause and effect. The meaning of action in time is inseparable from its meaning in place.

Imagination, Causes, Action

Wendell Berry (2011). “Standing by Words: Essays”, p.88, Counterpoint Press

You may say that I am just another outdated old man complaining about progress and the changes of time. But, you see, I have well considered that possibility myself, and am prepared o submit to correction by anybody who cares about a community, who can show me how the world is improved by that community's dying.

Men, Community, Progress

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

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