Wendell Berry quotes - page 6

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival. (Wendell Berry)
It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. View quote
Wendell Berry
We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough? View quote
Wendell Berry
I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. View quote
Wendell Berry
To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd. View quote
Wendell Berry
We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it. And to take good care of it, we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it. View quote
Wendell Berry
The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. View quote
Wendell Berry
The old and honorable idea of 'vocation' is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted. View quote
Wendell Berry
Why should conservationists have a positive interest in... farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat. View quote
Wendell Berry
The latest technology is not always good for anything except to the producers of the technology. View quote
Wendell Berry
An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment. (Wendell Berry)
It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits. View quote
Wendell Berry
We cannot comprehend what comprehends us. View quote
Wendell Berry
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. View quote
Wendell Berry
Urban conservationists may feel entitled to be unconcerned about food production because they are not farmers. But they can't be let off so easily, for they are all farming by proxy. View quote
Wendell Berry
I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever. Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. View quote
Wendell Berry
For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless. View quote
Wendell Berry
These are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean it more. View quote
Wendell Berry
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins. View quote
Wendell Berry
If conservationists will attempt to resume responsibility for their need to eat, they will be led back fairly directly to all their previous concerns for the welfare of nature. View quote
Wendell Berry
The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking. (Wendell Berry)
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants. View quote
Wendell Berry
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. View quote
Wendell Berry
I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children... View quote
Wendell Berry
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. View quote
Wendell Berry