We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it.
WENDELL BERRYTo cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
More Wendell Berry Quotes
-
-
And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease.
WENDELL BERRY -
The 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 BERRY -
If we can’t afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we’re in an insurmountable mess.
WENDELL BERRY -
All right, every day ain’t going to be the best day of your life, don’t worry about that. If you stick to it you hold the possibility open that you will have better days.
WENDELL BERRY -
Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.
WENDELL BERRY -
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 -
The two great aims of industrialism – replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy – seem close to fulfillment.
WENDELL BERRY -
The latest technology is not always good for anything except to the producers of the technology.
WENDELL BERRY -
For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless.
WENDELL BERRY -
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 -
There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places.
WENDELL BERRY -
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes.
WENDELL BERRY -
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
WENDELL BERRY -
Why should conservationists have a positive interest in… farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.
WENDELL BERRY -
I’ve had a good life, and was born to and among people I’ve admired and loved.
WENDELL BERRY -
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 -
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 -
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
WENDELL BERRY -
The ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are good gifts.
WENDELL BERRY -
The atmosphere, the earth, the water and the water cycle – those things are good gifts.
WENDELL BERRY -
If conservationists will attempt to resume responsibility for their need to eat, they will be led back fairly directly to all their previous concerns for the welfare of nature.
WENDELL BERRY -
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 -
Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest.
WENDELL BERRY -
These are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean it more.
WENDELL BERRY -
To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.
WENDELL BERRY -
I’m a writer more than I am a talker.
WENDELL BERRY