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We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true.

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

Add Bad Better Definition Escape Food May Past Reason Something Strive
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

Agriculture Characteristically Industrial Problem Proceed Single Solution
We’re all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I’m complicit in the things that I’m trying to oppose.
WENDELL BERRY

All Complicit May Oppose Thing Try
To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.
WENDELL BERRY

Cherish Earth Foster Hope Legitimate Our Remain Renewal Survival
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
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

Capable Devotion Justice People Public
Whether we or our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
WENDELL BERRY

All Deal Deciosn Know More Nature Out Party Politician Vote Whether
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
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
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
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

Badly Disease Effection Enough Etaliate Gravely Neighbors Offend Poverty Resoinsinble True Truth Ugliness
An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment.
WENDELL BERRY

Derive Economy Genuine Global Local Locality Measure National Neighbour Offer Security
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

All Best Day Every Go Life Open Possible Right Stick Worry
To 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 BERRY

Death Hear Know Terrible Thousand War
Annual plants are nature’s emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established.
WENDELL BERRY

Annual Cover Emergency Hold Medical Nature Perennial Plant Scar Seed Service Sound Until
I’m a writer more than I am a talker.
WENDELL BERRY

More Talker Writer

We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true.

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We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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