Wendell Berry Quotes

Quotes about:

• People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.

  Wendell Berry

  Inspiring, People, Attention

  264 Copy quote

• When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Stars, Children

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

  244 Copy quote
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  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.

  Wendell Berry

  Bread, Common, Wonder

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

  189 Copy quote
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  Sit and be still
  until in the time
  of no rain you hear
  beneath the dry wind's
  commotion in the trees
  the sound of flowing
  water among the rocks,
  a stream unheard before,
  and you are where
  breathing is prayer.

  Wendell Berry

  Prayer, Rain, Rocks

  "Given". Book by Wendell Berry, 2005.

  196 Copy quote

• We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.

  Wendell Berry

  Effort, Would Be, World

  260 Copy quote
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  The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Responsibility, Garden

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

  257 Copy quote

• A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.

  Wendell Berry

  Spiritual, Knowing, People

  Wendell Berry (2012). “The Long-Legged House”, p.71, Counterpoint Press

  237 Copy quote

• It may be that when we no longer know... which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

  Wendell Berry

  Real, Journey, Mind

  "Standing by Words: Essays". Book by Wendell Berry, 2011.

  193 Copy quote

• The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.

  Wendell Berry

  Community, Age, Care

  Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.70, Counterpoint

  57 Copy quote

• Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

  Wendell Berry

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

  Wendell Berry (2004). “Citizenship Papers: Essays”, p.157, Counterpoint Press

  86 Copy quote

• Under the pavement the dirt is dreaming of grass.

  Wendell Berry

  Dream, Dirt, Pavement

  28 Copy quote

• We clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us; we enter the little circle of each other's arms, and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance, and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.

  Wendell Berry

  Moving, Hands, Circles

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.10, Counterpoint Press

  194 Copy quote

• When I rise up, let me rise up joyful like a bird. When I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf.

  Wendell Berry

  Regret, Fall, Bird

  Wendell Berry (2011). “Farming: A Hand Book”, p.68, Counterpoint Press

  50 Copy quote

• We don't have a right to ask whether we're going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what's the right thing to do? What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?

  Wendell Berry

  Want, Succeed, Doe

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

  215 Copy quote

• It is no more possible to live in the future than it is to live in the past. If life is not now, it is never.

  Wendell Berry

  Past, Life Is, Ifs

  Wendell Berry (2012). “The Long-Legged House”, p.189, Counterpoint Press

  11 Copy quote

• The soil under the grass is dreaming of a young forest, and under the pavement the soil is dreaming of grass.

  Wendell Berry

  Dream, Pavement, Soil

  Wendell Berry (2006). “Given: Poems”, p.4, Counterpoint

  41 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Garden, Earth Day

  50 Copy quote

• You can't know where life will take you, but you can commit to a direction

  Wendell Berry

  Commit, Knows

  40 Copy quote

• I would like you to show me, if you can, where the line can be drawn between an organism and it's environment. The environment is in you. It's passing through you. You're breathing it in and out. You and every other creature.

  Wendell Berry

  Breathing, Lines, Environment

  4 Copy quote

• The miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.

  Wendell Berry

  Distance, Wine, Air

  18 Copy quote

• Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Memories, Party

  91 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Real, Inspiration, Journey

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

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Years, Practice, Two

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

  45 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Berry

  Artist, Order, Kind

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

  13 Copy quote

• We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness. True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources. In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.

  Wendell Berry

  Loneliness, Wild Places, Voice

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.11, Counterpoint

  195 Copy quote

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