A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The constructions of language, which is to say the constructions of thought, are formed within experience, not the other way around. — 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
I like the way that the history of the tree shapes the tree. There's no distinction between the tree and its history.… — 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
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
The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray… — 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
The world is so full and abundant it is like a pregnant woman carrying a child in one arm and leading another… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
There's a world of difference . . . between that information to which we now presumably have access by way of computers,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Geese appear high over us, / pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, / as in love or sleep, holds them to their… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The law is meant to work for justice. But people who know themselves know that, at some point, justice had better be… — 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
The wrecking ball is characteristic of our way with materials. We 'cannot afford' to log a forest selectively, to mine without destroying… — 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
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
If, on the other hand, conservationists are willing to insist on having the best food, produced in the best way, as close… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I began to know my story then. Like everybody's, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
To accept that there is nothing to do is to despair. It is to become in some fundamental way less than human.… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
But the sower going forth to sow sets foot into time to come, the seeds falling on his own place. He has… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The two ideas, justice and vocation, are inseparable.... It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and… — 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
Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
If you're a writer and you are at all inclined to speak as a Christian in some way, you realize very quickly… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Obviously, if Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable inquiries, then Christians, regardless of their… — 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
