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 BERRYThe primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.
WENDELL BERRYUrban 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 BERRYI’ve had a good life, and was born to and among people I’ve admired and loved.
WENDELL BERRYTo be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.
WENDELL BERRYTo hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we ‘know’ that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.
WENDELL BERRYThe only time I’ve been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979.
WENDELL BERRYThe 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 BERRYWhy should conservationists have a positive interest in… farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.
WENDELL BERRYThe ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are good gifts.
WENDELL BERRYFor any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless.
WENDELL BERRYPrayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.
WENDELL BERRYThe old and honorable idea of ‘vocation’ is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.
WENDELL BERRYThere are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places.
WENDELL BERRYWe have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it.
WENDELL BERRYWe learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?
WENDELL BERRYWe cannot comprehend what comprehends us.
WENDELL BERRY