Wendell Berry Quotes (189 quotes, page 2)

Wendell Berry: 189 quotes7 likes

Wendell Berry Quotes

“Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.”

Wendell Berry

"Economy and Pleasure".
What Are People For? (1990)

“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.”

Wendell Berry

Source: A Place on Earth

“You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.”

Wendell Berry

“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.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry

Standing by Words: Essays (2011), Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms (1982)
Context: It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and 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.

“Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.
(pg.99, "The Body and the Earth")”

Wendell Berry

Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

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

Wendell Berry

“Be joyful because it is humanly possible.”

Wendell Berry

“A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.”

Wendell Berry

Citizenship Papers (2003), The Total Economy
Context: A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. Unlike a person, a corporation does not age. It does not arrive, as most persons finally do, at a realization of the shortness and smallness of human lives; it does not come to see the future as the lifetime of the children and grandchildren of anybody in particular.

“Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Hannah Coulter

“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.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Jayber Crow

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Given

“I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade.”

Wendell Berry

Source: What Are People For?

“What I stand for
is what I stand on.”

Wendell Berry

"Below" in A Part (1980).
Poems

“… And we pray, not for new
earth or heaven, but to be quiet
in heart, and in eye clear.
What we need is here.”

Wendell Berry

“Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call “the economy” or “the free market” is less and less distinguishable from warfare.”

Wendell Berry

Citizenship Papers (2003), The Failure of War
Context: Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call “the economy” or “the free market” is less and less distinguishable from warfare. For about half of the last century, we worried about world conquest by international communism. Now with less worry (so far) we are witnessing world conquest by international capitalism. Though its political means are milder (so far) than those of communism, this newly internationalized capitalism may prove even more destructive of human cultures and communities, of freedom, and of nature. Its tendency is just as much toward total dominance and control.

“The cloud is free only to go with the wind. The rain is free only in falling.”

Wendell Berry

“There comes… a longing never to travel again except on foot.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Remembering

“Eating is an agricultural act.”

Wendell Berry

"The Pleasures of Eating" http://www.stjoan.com/ecosp/docs/pleasures_of_eating_by_wendell_b.htm <br class="br">What Are People For? (1990) <br class="br">Source: What Are People for Essays By Wendell B

“Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.”

Wendell Berry

“If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going.”

Wendell Berry

“I have always loved a window, especially an open one.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Jayber Crow

“… 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 legitimate hope.”

Wendell Berry

Variant: 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.
Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“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

“When going back makes sense, you are going ahead.”

Wendell Berry

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

Wendell Berry

Source: What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth

“Some nights in the midst of this loneliness I swung among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Jayber Crow

“It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.”

Wendell Berry

Source: The Collected Poems, 1957-1982

“The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.”

Wendell Berry

Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“After a while, though the grief did not go away from us, it grew quiet. What had seemed a storm wailing through the entire darkness seemed to come in at last and lie down.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Jayber Crow

“Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Jayber Crow

“It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.”

Wendell Berry

Source: The Long-Legged House

“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)”

Wendell Berry

Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”

Wendell Berry

"A Poem of Difficult Hope".
Source: What Are People For? (1990)
Context: Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.

“There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Jayber Crow

“The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it or to escape what is bad in it but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.”

Wendell Berry

“This massive ascendancy of corporate power over democratic process is probably the most ominous development since the end of World War II, and for the most part "the free world" seems to be regarding it as merely normal.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food

“What can't be helped must be endured.”

Wendell Berry

Source: Jayber Crow

“Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.”