Wendell Berry Quotes About Giving

Quotes about: Giving

• One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Garden, Race

• 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”

• As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words; my property is that arrangement. The thoughts in this book, on the contrary, are not mine. They came freely to me, and I give them freely away. I have no "intellectual property," and I think that all claimants to such property are theives.

  Wendell Berry

  Book, Thinking, Giving

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

• 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.

• You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.

  Wendell Berry

  Giving, Wish, Way

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Grief, Blessing, Men

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

• Willing to die you give up your will; keep still, until moved by what moves all else, you move.

  Wendell Berry

  Giving Up, Moving, Willing

  Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.166, Counterpoint Press

• 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?

  Wendell Berry

  Children, Air, Ecosystems

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

• Obviously, if Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable inquiries, then Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in economy-which is to say, in nature and in work. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life.

  Wendell Berry

  Christian, Organization, Our World

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Jobs, Animal, Law

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Believe, Thinking, People

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

• I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?

  Wendell Berry

  Dream, Thinking, People

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

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Ideas, Giving, Care

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

• Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away.

  Wendell Berry

  Giving, Reason

  Wendell Berry (2013). “This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems”, p.141, 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Home, Land Use, Hands

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

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Art, Work, Names

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

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Giving Up, Men, Doe

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

• Give your approval to all you cannot understand.

  Wendell Berry

  Giving, Approval

  Wendell Berry (2013). “A Country of Marriage: Poems”, p.16, Counterpoint Press

• If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other things. They say their vows to the community as much as to one another, and the community gathers around them to hear and to wish them well, on their behalf and its own. It gathers around them because it understands how necessary, how joyful, and how fearful this joining is. These lovers, pledging themselves to one another "until death," are giving themselves away, and they are joined by this as no law or contract could join them.

  Wendell Berry

  Thinking, Law, Giving

• To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it.

  Wendell Berry

  Life, Giving Up, Miracle

  Wendell Berry (2001). “Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition”, Counterpoint Press

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