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The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

Book by Wendell Berry · 36 quotes · Community, Thinking, World

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The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry Quotes

“Anybody interested in solving, rather than profiting from, the problems of food production and distribution will see that in the long run the safest food supply is a local food supply, not a supply that is dependent on a global economy. Nations and regions within nations must be left free and should be encouraged to develop the local food economies that best suit local needs and local conditions.”

NeedsShouldLongProblemRunningLeftNationsEconomyConditionsProductionsLocalsSuitsDependentRegionsLong RunsDistributionGlobal EconomyBe EncouragedFood SupplyFood ProductionLocal Food
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“We must see that it is foolish, sinful and suicidal to destroy the health of nature for the sake of an economy that is really not an economy at all but merely a financial system, one that is unnatural, undemocratic, sacrilegious, and ephemeral.”

EconomySakeFinancialFoolishSuicidalUnnaturalEphemeralFinancial SystemSacrilegious
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“Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into Heaven, it has been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households.”

WorldHumansHas BeensMadeSoulStatesHeavenCommunityNaturalChristianityEconomyEconomicModernToolsEnvironmentalContraryDespiteDestroyedProtestDividedDedicatedSustainabilityHouseholdStatus QuoPredatoryVillainyEconomic Status
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“But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation. For in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities, and nations. He is a contradicter of the fundamental miracle of life.”

NationsCitiesChristianityCreationMiracleArmyMurderFundamentalsMereEnvironmentalThese DaysSustainabilityAlliancesDestroyersMiracle Of Life
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“It is therefore absurd to approach the subject of health piecemeal with a departmentalized band of specialists. A medical doctor uninterested in nutrition, in agriculture, in the wholesomeness of mind and spirit is as absurd as a farmer who is uninterested in health. Our fragmentation of this subject cannot be our cure, because it is our disease. The body cannot be whole alone. Persons cannot be whole alone. It is wrong to think that bodily health is compatible with spiritual confusion or cultural disorder, or with polluted air and water or impoverished soil.”

ThinkingMindPersonsWholeBodySpiritualSpiritWaterAirSubjectsBandDiseaseApproachDoctorsEnvironmentalMedicalAbsurdConfusionCuresSoilDisorderFarmersSustainabilityNutritionAgricultureSpecialistsCompatibleFragmentationAir And WaterUninterestedMedical DoctorWholesomeness
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“In this state of total consumerism-which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves-all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.”

PeopleThinkingIdeasStatesEarthTermBrokenOffersForgottenMeaningfulContactMotiveConsumerismHelplessDependenceOverconsumption
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“Perhaps it is to prepare to hear some day the music of the spheres that I am always turning my ears to the music of streams. There is indeed a music in streams, but it is not for the hurried. It has to be loitered by and imagined. Or imagined toward, for it is hardly for men at all. Nature has a patient ear. To her the slowest funeral march sounds like a jig. She is satisfied to have the notes drawn out to the lengths of days or weeks or months. Small variations are acceptable to her, modulations as leisurely as the opening of a flower.”

MenSoundWeekFlowerMonthsEarsNotesPatientSatisfiedOpeningStreamsLengthMarchFuneralSpheresAcceptableVariation
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“I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade.”

IfsWantHas BeensMadeWaterAnimalTreeMiserableMeatPleasantShadeDislikePastures
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“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.”

PeopleNeedsShouldUseHateLostCommunityHealthyDrugLonelyPainfulNeighborDullIllegalLeisureOccasionalShamefulDrug UseIllegal DrugsHealthy Society
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“My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.”

ThinkingLifeShouldMeanI CanOrderPassionWishPositiveProductsPossessionOur TimeMaterialismLeisureLiving My LifeEmployedMy Wish
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“We could say that the human race is a great coauthorship in which we are collaborating with God and nature in the making of ourselves and one another. From this there is no escape. We may collaborate either well or poorly or we may refuse to collaborate, but even to refuse to collaborate is to exert an influence and to affect the quality of the product. This is only a way of saying that by ourselves we have no meaning and no dignity; by ourselves we are outside the human definition, outside our identity.”

WayHumansWellsMayNatureRaceQualityInfluenceIdentityProductsDignityDefinitionsRefuseHuman RaceCollaboratingGod And Nature
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“To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, and Community)”

PeopleThinkingHumansPersonsFactsOrderCommunityAbilityViolenceLandJudgingStupidityRevelationsSuspectsJustificationSurroundingsUgliness
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“Creation is thus God's presence in creatures. The Greek Orthodox theologian Philip Sherrard has written that "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God's hidden Being." This means that we and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate, for to every creature, the gift of life is a portion of the breath and spirit of God. (pg. 308, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)”

MeanLife IsSpiritChristianityWrittenCreationCreaturesSurvivalBreathsGreekManifestationIntimateOrthodoxLive ByPortionsTheologianSanctitySpirit Of GodPhilipGod's PresenceGifts Of LifeGreek Orthodox
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“I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a "hypaethral book," such as Thoreau talked about - a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.”

ThinkingHas BeensBookEnoughSeemsNaturalCommonExistenceWonderSkyWallUnderstoodExtraordinaryIncrediblesBreadPassagesAppreciatedMiraculousImprobableDaily BreadOur Daily Bread
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“No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality.”

WorldMayMatterWholeHumanityTermAcceptanceResponsibleParadoxOur RelationshipSmall PartsPartiality
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“The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around.”

LittlesFormNaturalDifferencesPerfectKnownPathMovementHabitObviousObstaclesContactLandscapeDestructiveRitualAdaptationFamiliarity
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“Soil is not usually lost in slabs or heaps of magnificent tonnage. It is lost a little at a time over millions of acres by the careless acts of millions of people. It cannot be saved by heroic feats of gigantic technology, but only by millions of small acts and restraints, conditioned by small fidelities, skills, and desires. Soil loss is ultimately a cultural problem; it will be corrected only by cultural solutions.”

PeopleLittlesProblemDesireLostLossMillionsTechnologyEnvironmentSkillsSolutionsSavedSoilHeroicMagnificentRestraintCarelessFidelityFeatsAcresSmall ActsSlabs
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“In order to survive, a plurality of true communities would require not egalitarianism and tolerance but knowledge, an understanding of the necessity of local differences, and respect. Respect, I think, always implies imagination - the ability to see one another, across our inevitable differences, as living souls.”

ThinkingSoulOrderUnderstandingCommunityImaginationDifferencesAbilityToleranceLocalsInevitableAbility To SeeEgalitarianism
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“The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”

MeanPoliticalCommunityNaturalWealthEnemyEconomyDemocracyFoundationPracticalsLocalsNeighborhoodHouseholdAlignmentPolitical PowerCommonwealthLocality
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“Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into His face, as if they were of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them.”

IfsFacesResponsibilityStupidEconomicsDestructionEnvironmentalConservativeBetrayalStewardshipBlasphemyDestruction Of NatureFamily Responsibility
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