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Earth Quotes by Wendell Berry

33 Earth quotes by Wendell Berry

All Earth quotes Wendell Berry’s page

If you’ve ever felt the pulse of the land beneath your feet, Berry’s verses will echo that intimacy. These 33 snippets weave his reverence for soil, seasons, and the simple lives that tend them, offering a grounded companion for anyone who cares about the planet’s quiet wisdom.

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The earth is what we all have in common.

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

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

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A man who does not ask to much become the promise of his land. His marriage married to his place, he waits…

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

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

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

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If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life: worms, fungi, microorganisms of all kinds ... Given…

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Geese appear high over us, / pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, / as in love or sleep, holds them to their…

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

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

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But the sower going forth to sow sets foot into time to come, the seeds falling on his own place. He has…

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

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A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the…

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If we are to have a culture as resilient and competent in the face of necessity as it needs to be, then…

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In this state of total consumerism-which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives…

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This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing…

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

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Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible... Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and…

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Our politics and science have never mastered the fact that people need more than to understand their obligation to one another and…

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If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and,…

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

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“The soul, in its loneliness, hopes only for "salvation." And yet what is the burden of the Bible if not a sense…

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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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“Once the creator was removed from the creation, divinity became only a remote abstraction, a social weapon in the hands of the…

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“But even in the much-publicized rebellion of the young against the materialism of the affluent society, the consumer mentality is too often…

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“In a time of disorder [Laertes] has returned to the care of the earth, the foundation of life and hope. And Odysseus…

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“...the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what…

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The atmosphere, the earth, the water and the water cycle - those things are good gifts. The ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are…

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The name of our proper connection to the earth is 'good work,' for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors…

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The line that connects the bombing of civilian populations to the mountain removed by strip mining ... to the tortured prisoner seems…

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The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what…

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Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all…

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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…

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

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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 is a…

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

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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.…

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“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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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 want it…

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Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

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

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