Nature Quotes by Wendell Berry

I'd rather rely on mother nature's wisdom than man's cleverness

— Wendell Berry

The earth is what we all have in common.

— Wendell Berry

“This is the justice that we are learning from the ecologists: you cannot damage what you are dependent upon without damaging yourself.”

— Wendell Berry

People who want to see the beauty of nature from motorboats and automobiles would obviously be just as pleased, and as fully…

— Wendell Berry

We're living, it seems, in the culmination of a long warfare - warfare against human beings, other creatures and the Earth itself.

— Wendell Berry

Nature is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may…

— Wendell Berry

Annual plants are nature's emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established.

— Wendell Berry

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

— Wendell Berry

As long as we insist on relating to it strictly on our own terms-as strange to us or subject to us-the wilderness…

— Wendell Berry

The more artificial a human environment becomes, the more the word ‘natural’ becomes a term of value.

— Wendell Berry

The only true and effective "operator's manual for spaceship earth" is not a book that any human will ever write; it is…

— Wendell Berry

Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along…

— Wendell Berry

“While we live our bodies are moving particles of the earth, joined inextricably both to the soil and to the bodies of…

— Wendell Berry

All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by…

— Wendell Berry

Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most…

— Wendell Berry

We don't have a right to ask whether we're going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to…

— Wendell Berry

The river is of the earth and it is free. It is rigorously embanked and bound, and yet it is free. To…

— Wendell Berry

“Dance,' they told me, and I stood still, and while I stood quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I…

— Wendell Berry

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

— Wendell Berry

If one accepts the 24th and 104th Psalms as scriptural norms, then surface mining and other forms of earth destruction are perversions.…

— Wendell Berry

“In relation to the natural world, the pleasure of Americans can be destructive in the same way that their work has already…

— Wendell Berry

Humans, like all other creatures, must make a difference; otherwise, they cannot live. But unlike other creatures, humans must make a choice…

— Wendell Berry

Community, then, is an indispensable term in any discussion of the connection between people and land. A healthy community is a form…

— Wendell Berry

“The Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least…

— Wendell Berry

“Agriculture must mediate between nature and the human community, with ties and obligations in both directions. To farm well requires an elaborate…

— Wendell Berry

If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see…

— Wendell Berry

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

— Wendell Berry

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

— Wendell Berry

“If [the loss of fertility of the soil and the loss of soil as a renewable resource] does happen, we are familiar…

— Wendell Berry

“The modern ignorance is in people's assumption that they can outsmart their own nature. It is in the arrogance that will believe…

— Wendell Berry

“If we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental…

— Wendell Berry

“No settled family or community has ever called its home place an “environment.” None has ever called its feeling for its home…

— Wendell Berry

“A purposeless virtue is a contradiction in terms. Virtue, like harmony, cannot exist alone; a virtue must lead to harmony between one…

— Wendell Berry

“Until modern times, we focused a great deal of the best of our thought upon rituals of return to the human condition.…

— Wendell Berry

Our most serious problem, perhaps, is that we have become a nation of fantasists. We believe, apparently, in the infinite availability of…

— Wendell Berry

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

— Wendell Berry

“A music attends the things of the earth. To sense that music is to be near the possibility of health and joy.”

— Wendell Berry

“To owe what you had not yet earned, to have to work to earn what you had already spent, was a personal…

— Wendell Berry

It is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in…

— Wendell Berry

I believe until fairly recently our destructions of nature were more or less unwitting -- the by-products, so to speak, of our…

— Wendell Berry