The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it. — 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
