The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it.… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Urban conservationists may feel entitled to be unconcerned about food production because they are not farmers. But they can't be let off… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
We're all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I'm complicit in the things that I'm trying to oppose. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Nature is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymuosly in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
So it is that the life force may take possession of a man-- so that in the end he may be possessed… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
It may be that when we no longer know... which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
That we should have an agriculture based as much on petroleum as the soil-that we need petroleum exactly as much as we… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The question before me, now that I am old, is not how to be dead, which I know from enough practice, but… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Men may dam it and say that they have made a lake, but it will still be a river. It will keep… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
We need to confront honestly the issue of scale... You may need a large corporation to run an airline or to manufacture… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
This, I thought, is what is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
You may say that I am just another outdated old man complaining about progress and the changes of time. But, you see,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Without a complex knowledge of one's place and without the faithfulness to one's place on which such knowledge depends, it is inevitable… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
However destructive may be the policies of the government and the methods and products of the corporations, the root of the problem… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
We could say that the human race is a great coauthorship in which we are collaborating with God and nature in the… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The assumption is that people so ignorant and thoughtless and silly and greedy may simply call upon the Army Corps of Engineers… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Our politics and science have never mastered the fact that people need more than to understand their obligation to one another and… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
And having thoughtlessly polluted our streams and rivers, we have seen in recent years a rapidly growing market for bottled drinking water.… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
“The Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
During the last 17 years... I have been working at the restoration of a once exhausted hillside. Its scars are now healed… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
There are, it seems, two muses: The Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Akin to the idea that time is money is the concept, less spoken but as commonly assumed, that we may be adequately… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
You've got to reach towards a better language, and you're not going to make it up from scratch; you've got to reach… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The sense of it may come with watching a flock of cedar waxwings eating wild grapes in the top of the woods… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
To be well used, creatures and places must be used sympathetically, just as they must be known sympathetically to be well known...The… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The 'environmental crisis' has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
From a human point of view, the difference between the mind of a human and that of a mountain goat is wonderful;… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
During the last 17 years... I have been working at the restoration of a once exhausted hillside. Its scars are now healed over, though… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, we… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
“The two families, sundered in the ruin of a friendship, were united again first in new friendship and then in mariage. My grandfather made… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
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.… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
“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… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
“The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as "the environment" -- that is, what surrounds us, we have already made a profound… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
“That we can prescribe the terms of our own success, that we can live outside or in ignorance of the Great Economy are the… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
“The mind that comes to rest is tended In ways that it cannot intend: Is borne, preserved, and comprehended By what it cannot comprehend.… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
The mercy of the world is time. Time does not stop for love, but it does not stop for death and grief, either. — Wendell Berry Copy Share
The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all. — Wendell Berry Copy Share
I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
These are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean… — Wendell Berry Copy Share
