Beware the machinery of longevity. When a man's life is over the decent thing is for him to die. The forest does… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
A man who does not ask to much become the promise of his land. His marriage married to his place, he waits… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to… — 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You may say that I am just another outdated old man complaining about progress and the changes of time.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
I have this love for Mattie. It was formed in me as he himself was formed. It has his shape, you might… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
You don't need to be told some things. You can sometimes tell more by a man's silence and the set of his… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Returning from the wilderness a man becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
...I was a young man. I hardly knew what I knew, let alone what I was going to know. — 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 is the man who can think of no alternative to his enslavement who is truly a slave. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
There are endless ways to amuse oneself and be idle, and most of them lie outside the woods. I assume that when… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
When you are old you can look back and see yourself when you are young. It is almost like looking down from… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his throat every time it hailed. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The more local and settled a culture, the better it stays put, the less the damage. It is the foreigner whose road… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming, whose hands reach into the ground and sprout, to him the… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place. I find no peace or grace. We sell the… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Perhaps it is to prepare to hear some day the music of the spheres that I am always turning my ears to… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I dream of a quiet man / who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows / where the rarest wildflowers /… — 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
A man's life is always dealing with permanence, that is the most dangerous kind of irresponsibility is to think of your doings… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
