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Wendell Berry Quotes - Page 7

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

If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?

If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?

Imagination, Needs, Novel

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth”, p.10, Counterpoint Press

We walked always in beauty, it seemed to me. We walked and looked about, or stood and looked. Sometimes, less often, we would sit down. We did not often speak. The place spoke for us and was a kind of speech. We spoke to each other in the things we saw.

Saws, Speech, Kind

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

Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love. That is the truest thing they ever see, for without it life is death.

Vision, World, Lovers

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

Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world? (pg. 215, Economy and Pleasure)

Grace, Comfort, World

And so there would always be more to remember that could no longer be seen...our history is always returning to a little patch of weeds and saplings with an old chimney sticking up by itself...and here I look ahead to the resting of my case: I love the house that belonged to the chimney, holding it bright in memory, and love the saplings and the weeds.

Weed, Memories, House

It is understood that nonhuman creatures adapt to their places or they don't live. And for some reason that I can't figure out, even the biologists have excused our own species from that obligation. I think there's going to be a biological penalty to be paid for that eventually.

Thinking, Reason, Figures

Source: www.neh.gov

Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm - which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of American farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.

Animal, Two, Water

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.54, Counterpoint

The ecological principle in agriculture is to connect the genius of the place, to fit the farming to the farm.

Agriculture, Principles, Genius

"Wendell E. Berry Interview". Interview with Jim Leach, www.neh.gov. 2012.

Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.

Life, Humble, Ambition

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.90, Counterpoint Press

Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

Lying, Practice, Track

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

The promoters of the global economy...see nothing odd or difficult about unlimited economic growth or unlimited consumption in a limited world.

Growth, World, Odd

Don't pray for the rain to stop; pray for good luck fishing when the river floods.

Rain, Good Luck, Fishing

Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.148, Counterpoint Press

Categorical condemnation is the hatred of the mob. It makes cowards brave. And there is nothing more fearful than a religious mob, a mob overflowing with righteousness – as at the crucifixion and before and since. This can happen only after we have made a categorical refusal to kindness: to heretics, foreigners, enemies or any other group different from ourselves.

Religious, Kindness, Hatred

Our obsession with security is a measure of the power we have granted the future to hold over us.

Future, Obsession, Granted

Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.50, Counterpoint

My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.

Life, Positive, Passion

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.75, Counterpoint

In Kentucky, we're destroying mountains, including their soils and forests, in order to get at the coal. In other words, we're destroying a permanent value in order to get at an almost inconceivably transient value. That coal has a value only if and when it is burnt. And after it is burnt, it is a pollutant and a waste-a burden.

Kentucky, Order, Ifs And

"Taking Care of What We’ve Been Given". Interview with Thomas P. Healy, www.counterpunch.org. April 15, 2006.

I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a "hypaethral book," such as Thoreau talked about - a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.

Wall, Book, Thinking

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.311, Counterpoint

Returning from the wilderness a man becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forbears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his successors. He embodies the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy.

Grief, Blessing, Men

Wendell Berry (1978). “The unsettling of America: culture & agriculture”, Random House (NY)

It is wrong to condemn people for doing a thing and then offer no alternative but failure. A person could get mad about that.

Mad, People, Alternatives

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

To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for.

Beautiful, Affection, Pleasure

Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.312, Counterpoint

We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them. (pg. 43, "The Unsettling of America")

Ambition, America, Fit

This, I thought, is what is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means that your will and God's will may not be the same. It means there's a good possibility that you won't get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer.

Prayer, Mean, Thinking

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

Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking even the courage of a personal hatred.

Hatred, Cold Hearted, Abstract

I believe that the community - in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures - is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms. (pg. 146, Health is Membership)

Believe, Community, Membership

The Captains of Industry have always counseled the rest of us "to be realistic." Let us, therefore, be realistic. Is it realistic to assume that the present economy would be just fine if only it would stop poisoning the air and water, or if only it would stop soil erosion, or if only it would stop degrading watersheds and forest ecosystems, or if only it would stop seducing children, or if only it would stop buying politicians, or if only it would give women and favored minorities an equitable share of the loot?

Children, Air, Ecosystems

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

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