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Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry Quotes

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Famous Wendell Berry Quotes

“The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air access remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.”

WayKindStillsWaterDifferencesTechnologyEconomyAirMilitaryRevolutionDrugTaxesWeaponsMassIndependentRemainsTradeFinalsDefeatAverageHeavyAccessConsumersClothingsUsersPollutionShelterConsumerismConquestItemsDeprivedNoveltyFurThoroughOrnamentsOverconsumptionStaples
Book:The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture
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“And having thoughtlessly polluted our streams and rivers, we have seen in recent years a rapidly growing market for bottled drinking water. I am sure that some will say that a rapidly growing market for water is "good for the economy," and most of us are still affluent enough to pay the cost. Nevertheless, it is a considerable cost that we are now paying for drinkable water, which we once had in plentiful supply at little cost or none at all. And the increasing of the cost suggests that the time may come when the cost will be unaffordable.”

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Book:The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays
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“It is a fact that the entire Kentucky River system, which the central part of the state complacently depends upon for its future water, is deteriorating rapidly because of strip mining, because of bad farming, because of industrial and agricultural pollutants, because of urban sewage. It is deteriorating, that is to say, because almost nobody cares, or cares to know, where water comes from, so long as it keeps coming.”

KnowsLongStatesFactsCareWaterDependsRiversEnvironmentalUrbanFarmingMiningKentuckyNobody CaresDeterioratingSewage
Author:Wendell Berry
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“The assumption is that people so ignorant and thoughtless and silly and greedy may simply call upon the Army Corps of Engineers in order to receive a clean and abundant supply of water from reservoirs in the mountains. A much likelier outcome is that they will be drinking an ever stronger mixture of sewage and mine acid and mud and cropspray and various other defecations of the industrial paradise.”

PeopleMayOrderWaterMinesMountainArmyStrongerCleanDrinkingEnvironmentalVariousSillyIgnorantOutcomesAssumptionParadiseEngineersGreedyMudMixturesAcidReservoirsSewage
Author:Wendell Berry
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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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
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“The Captains of Industry have always counseled the rest of us "to be realistic." Let us, therefore, be realistic. Is it realistic to assume that the present economy would be just fine if only it would stop poisoning the air and water, or if only it would stop soil erosion, or if only it would stop degrading watersheds and forest ecosystems, or if only it would stop seducing children, or if only it would stop buying politicians, or if only it would give women and favored minorities an equitable share of the loot?”

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Book:In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World
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“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

WorldFeelsMayChildrenStillsLightLyingNightStarsGrowsWaitingSoundWaterNatureGriefGraceTaxesDespairBlindWoodsMy ChildrenWild ThingsForethoughtStill WatersHerons
Book:New Collected Poems
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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
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
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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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“Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and sleep, while it flows through the regions of the dark. It does not hold us, except we keep returning to its rich waters thirsty. We enter, willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.”

WantDoeJoyDiesWaterDarkSleepLove IsRichToo MuchWillingDrinkFlowEveningStreamsAbundanceRegionsShoreThirstThirstyCommonwealthWilling To Die
Book:A Country of Marriage: Poems
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“This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.”

KnowsBookEarthLyingHeavenWaterTreeReflectionCloudsSeedsPossessedGrainFloatsCapturedCrumbsMustardThis Is A BookMustard Seed
Book:Jayber Crow: A Novel
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“Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery.”

KnowsWayCoursesWaterSpaceLandCreationProduceDutyValuableAcknowledgeWelfareSoilGoodsFarmsFarmersFarmingWildlifeSceneryStewardsOpen SpacesFarming And Farmers
Book:Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Large Print 16pt)
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“Our Children no longer learn how to read the great book of Nature from their own direct experience, or how to interact creatively with the seasonal transformations of the planet. They seldom learn where their water come from or where it goes. We no longer coordinate our human celebration with the great liturgy of the heavens.”

HumansChildrenBookHeavenWaterNaturePlanetsGardenDirectTransformationOur ChildrenCelebrationGreat BookLiturgyCoordinates
Author:Wendell Berry
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“With its array of gadgets and machines, all powered by energies that are destructive of land or air or water, and connected to work, market, school, recreation, etc., by gasoline engines, the modern home is a veritable factory of waste and destruction. It is the mainstay of the economy of money. But within the economies of energy and nature, it is a catastrophe. It takes in the world's goods and converts them into garbage, sewage, and noxious fumes-for none of which have we found a use.”

WorldUseHomeSchoolFoundEnergyWaterMoneyEconomyAirModernLandWasteDestructionMachinesConnectedDestructiveEtcGoodsEnginesFactoriesCatastropheGarbageRecreationRenewable EnergyGadgetsGasolineSewageEnergy Use
Author:Wendell Berry
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“I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle... Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it, And the fear of it leaves me. It sings, and I hear its song.”

StillsLyingSongLeftWaterTreeQuietTasksSightCirclesLeaving MeStirringCattle
Book:A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997
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“Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm - which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of American farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.”

WellsTwoProblemTogetherWaterAnimalGeniusSolutionsPlantRaisedExpertsFarmsDividesQuantityStewardshipSurplusManurePlants And AnimalsFertilizer
Book:The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture
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“The miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.”

WorldStillsWaterForgetCommonExistenceGreaterAirFieldsColdBirdEmptyMiracleWineDistanceExtraordinaryWarmBreadSoilSunlightContinuingMiraculousGrapesLiliesDaily BreadStellarImprobabilityOur Daily BreadSmall Miracles
Author:Wendell Berry
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