Quotessence
Home / Books / The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

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

Book by Wendell Berry · 6 quotes · Community, Thinking, World

Filter quotes by topic

AllCommunityThinkingWorldEconomyHumansPeopleEnvironmentalLocalsNaturalChristianityHas BeensLandMadeMeanMindNeedsOrderProductsShouldSustainability

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

“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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
Create image

“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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
Create image

“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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
Create image

“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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
Create image

“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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
Create image

“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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
Create image