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 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 BERRYWhether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes.
WENDELL BERRYBetter than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
WENDELL BERRYI prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever.
WENDELL BERRYTo cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
WENDELL BERRYIt is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.
WENDELL BERRYAnnual plants are nature’s emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established.
WENDELL BERRYI come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief…
WENDELL BERRYWe learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?
WENDELL BERRYWhy should conservationists have a positive interest in… farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.
WENDELL BERRYIf 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 BERRYThe latest technology is not always good for anything except to the producers of the technology.
WENDELL BERRYWe cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true.
WENDELL BERRYAnd 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 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 BERRYIf 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