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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

It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits.
WENDELL BERRY

Breakfast Daily Fact Horrible Interrupting Paper Read
We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it.
WENDELL BERRY

Care Condition Good Live Take World
The only time I’ve been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979.
WENDELL BERRY

Arrest Hill Indiana Marble Nuclear Only Oppose Plant Power Time Year
The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.
WENDELL BERRY

Affection Always Care Community Go Good Lack Land Motive Often Primary Use
Urban conservationists may feel entitled to be unconcerned about food production because they are not farmers. But they can’t be let off so easily, for they are all farming by proxy.
WENDELL BERRY

Conservationist Entitle Farmer Feel Food Production Unconcern Urban
And to take good care of it, we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.
WENDELL BERRY

Care Good Know Love Take Willing
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
WENDELL BERRY

For Free Grace Rest Time World
We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?
WENDELL BERRY

Deal Enough Garden Learn Most Much Question Time Urgent
A longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
WENDELL BERRY

Do Justice Longer Memory Sense Sterner We
When you are new at sheep-raising and your ewe has a lamb, your impulse is to stay there and help it nurse and see to it and all. After a while, you know that the best thing you can do is walk out of the barn.
WENDELL BERRY

All Help Impulse IT Lamb New Nurse Raise See Sheep Stay When
I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself… something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.
WENDELL BERRY

Above Boy Bright Else Humble Make Myself Origin Out Something
It means that your will and God’s will may not be the same. It means there’s a good possibility that you won’t get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer.
WENDELL BERRY

Amy God Good Mean Possibility Prayer Same Suffer
It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.
WENDELL BERRY

Are Better From Learn Ourselves We
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far:
WENDELL BERRY

Been Deep Entirely Ever Far Free Idea Life Schooling Set So Still
This, I thought, is what is meant by ‘thy will be done’ in the Lord’s Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it.
WENDELL BERRY

Again Done Lord Meant Prayer Think Thought Thy Time Without
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief…
WENDELL BERRY

Come Forethought Grief Into Live Peace Tax Thing Wild

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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