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Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry Quotes

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Famous Wendell Berry Quotes

“We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsible within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone. (pg. 134, The Body and the Earth)”

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Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
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“People who blame the Bible for the modern destruction of nature have failed to see its delight in the variety and individuality of creatures and its insistence upon their holiness. But that delight-in, say, the final chapters of Job or the 104th Psalm-is far more useful to the cause of conservation than the undifferentiating abstractions of science... Reverence gives standing to creatures, and to our perception of them, just as the law gives standing to a citizen.”

PeopleGivingJobsLawCausesAnimalModernCitizensCreaturesPerceptionStandingDestructionBlameFinalsIndividualityDelightVarietyHolinessReverenceChaptersConservationAbstractionInsistencePsalmsDestruction Of Nature
Author:Wendell Berry
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“Humans, like all other creatures, must make a difference; otherwise, they cannot live. But unlike other creatures, humans must make a choice as to the kind and scale of difference they make. If they choose to make too small a difference, they diminish their humanity. If they choose to make too great a difference, they diminish nature, and narrow their subsequent choices; ultimately, they diminish or destroy themselves. Nature, then, is not only our source but also our limit and measure.”

IfsHumansKindHumanityChoicesDifferencesSourceCreaturesLimitsEnvironmentalScalesMaking A DifferenceSustainabilityDiminish
Author:Wendell Berry
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“The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality.”

Has BeensMadeRealityInspiringProductsIndustryCreaturesSittingPreparedAppearanceConsumersSubstanceMealsNutritionPassiveAgricultureExileSitting DownResemblance
Book:Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Large Print 16pt)
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“Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”

WorldDoePleasureMysteryFoodIgnoranceDependsGratitudeCreaturesEatingConnectionsDependence
Book:What Are People For?: Essays
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“If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared. (pg. 59, "Racism and the Economy")”

IfsWantHumansRealEarthLife IsTurnsWaterCommunityAnimalEconomyAirSecurityCreaturesRacismSafetyPlantProsperityNeighborLocalsOppressionWorldlySincerelyHomelandGoodwillOur CommunityGood HealthPlants And Animals
Book:The Hidden Wound
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“If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down to the world? ...how it might, because it could know its own creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?”

IfsKnowsMenWorldMightSufferingForceMy OwnWalksLove IsCompassionFateDivineCreaturesAssumingFaultsEdgesFleshMortalsOmnipotenceOver The EdgeEdge Of The World
Author:Wendell Berry
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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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
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“I thought, He must forebear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world.”

WorldBeautifulWishHurtPoorExistenceCreaturesGloryOrdinaryMiracleHungryPresentingGroaningBeautiful World
Book:Jayber Crow: A Novel
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“To be well used, creatures and places must be used sympathetically, just as they must be known sympathetically to be well known...The "animal scientist" to whom it is of no concern whether or not animals suffer will almost inevitably aid and abet the destruction of the decent old ideal of animal husbandry and, as a consequence, increase the suffering of animals. I hope that my country may be delivered from the remote, cold abstractions of university science.”

WellsMayCountryUsedSufferingAnimalKnownColdIndustryCreaturesConsequenceConcernIdealsDestructionScientistIncreaseUniversityAidsDecentPetWell KnownAbstractionAbet
Author:Wendell Berry
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“We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness. True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources. In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.”

FeelsHumansFoundVoiceLosesLonelinessSourceSolitudeCreaturesConsequenceOneselfAttractionObligationIntimateCommunionInner VoiceWild Places
Book:What Are People For?: Essays
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“We clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us; we enter the little circle of each other's arms, and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance, and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.”

LittlesHandsMovingArmsLoversCreaturesEarsCirclesPassingPassingsSubtleFragments
Book:What Are People For?: Essays
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“Community, then, is an indispensable term in any discussion of the connection between people and land. A healthy community is a form that includes all the local things that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the Creation. In speaking of community, then, we are speaking of a complex connection not only among human beings or between humans and their homeland but also between human economy and nature, between forest or prairie and field or orchard, and between troublesome creatures and pleasant ones. All neighbors are included.”

PeopleHumansFormTermCommunityHuman BeingsEconomyLandCreationFieldsHealthyCreaturesConnectionsComplexesConnectedNeighborLocalsForestsMysteriousDiscussionPleasantIndispensableHomelandTroublesomePrairieOrchard
Book:Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays
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