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Life Quotes by Wendell Berry

105 Life quotes by Wendell Berry

All Life quotes Wendell Berry’s page

Wendell Berry imagines a dinner from an animal that has lived well, and he reminds us that the world’s wonders are ordinary, not rare. He warns that a job that makes us forget who we are steals the joy of living. His words ask us to keep work and home close together.

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Do not tax your life with forethought of grief.

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We are living even now among punishments and ruins.

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“I never again would be able to put my life in a box and carry it away.”

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The world is whole beyond human knowing.

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

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I've had a good life, and was born to and among people I've admired and loved.

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

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You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours.

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“But this is not the story of a life. It is the story of lives, knit together, overlapping in succession, rising again…

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So it is that the life force may take possession of a man-- so that in the end he may be possessed…

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“He had nothing he could do with is life's work now except leave it to a man who thought nothing of it.”

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If we do not live where we work and when we work we are wasting our lives and our work too.

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“He loved the woods, where it seemed to him that every life was secret, including his own.”

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It is no more possible to live in the future than it is to live in the past. If life is not…

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A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food…

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Waking up from a dream of violence is much the same as waking up from a dream of love. You must go…

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I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar…

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There's a world of difference . . . between that information to which we now presumably have access by way of computers,…

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All right, every day ain't going to be the best day of your life, don't worry about that. If you stick to…

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“I am wholly willing to be here, Between the bright silent thousands of stars And the life of the grass pouring out…

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I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I…

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No individual life is an end in itself. One can live fully only by participating fully in the succession of the generations,…

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“And having returned from the woods, we remember with regret its restfulness. For all creatures there are in place, hence at rest.…

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“One of the attractions of moving away into te life of employment, I think, is being disconnected and free, unbothered by membership.…

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It would not do for the consumer to know that the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much…

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“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. ... We have been…

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We are now, measurably, reducing the availability of these life-supporting goods which we can think of (though only on the conditions of…

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To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in…

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“He was lonely because he could imagine himself as anything but himself and as anywhere but where he was. His competitiveness and…

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“The chance you had is the life you've got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives…

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The miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies…

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“Here on the river I have known peace and beauty such as I never knew in any other place. There is always…

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“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been…

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“I enjoyed coming and going without telling or explaining, being free. I enjoyed listening without talking. I enjoyed being wherever I was…

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“It is impossible to see how good work might be accomplished by people who think that our life in this world either…

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“…For many years now, that way of living has been scorned, and over the last 40 or 50 years it has nearly…

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“Over a long time, the coming and passing of several generations, the old farm had settled into its patterns and cycles of…

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“You have consented to time and it is winter. The country seems bigger, for you can see through the bare trees. There…

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“To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there…

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“What happens under the rule of specialization is that, though society becomes more and more intricate, it has less and less structure.…

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More by Wendell Berry

During the last 17 years... I have been working at the restoration of a once exhausted hillside. Its scars are now healed over, though…

Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, we…

To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a…

“The two families, sundered in the ruin of a friendship, were united again first in new friendship and then in mariage. My grandfather made…

The living can't quit living because the world has turned terrible and people they love and need are killed. They can't because they don't.…

“I knew a man who, in the age of chain-saws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was…

“The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as "the environment" -- that is, what surrounds us, we have already made a profound…

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define…

“That we can prescribe the terms of our own success, that we can live outside or in ignorance of the Great Economy are the…

“The mind that comes to rest is tended In ways that it cannot intend: Is borne, preserved, and comprehended By what it cannot comprehend.…

The mercy of the world is time. Time does not stop for love, but it does not stop for death and grief, either.

The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.

I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it…

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

These are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean…