Home » Wendell Berry Wendell Berry Wendell Berry 1 We're all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I'm complicit in the things that I'm trying to oppose. Wendell Berry Trying, May, Things Add to Collection 2 The only time I've been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979. Wendell Berry Time, Power, Plant Add to Collection 3 Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest. Wendell Berry Money, Problems, Agriculture Add to Collection 4 I'm a writer more than I am a talker. Wendell Berry Self Confidence, More, Writer Add to Collection 5 If 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 Berry Nature, Responsibility Add to Collection 6 The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants. Wendell Berry Home, Plants, Country Add to Collection 7 If 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: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins. Wendell Berry Life, Deep, Myself Add to Collection 8 For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless. Wendell Berry Suffering, Why, Sin Add to Collection 9 We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true. And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease. Wendell Berry Truth, God, Alone Add to Collection 10 I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Wendell Berry Nature, Day, Shadow Add to Collection 11 Whether we or our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. Wendell Berry Nature, Justice, Memory Add to Collection 12 The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it. Wendell Berry Good, Past, Escape Add to Collection 13 Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. Wendell Berry Nature, Justice, Memory Add to Collection 14 Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup. Wendell Berry Red, Better, Dawn Add to Collection 15 This, I thought, is what is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means that your will and God's will may not be the same. It means there's a good possibility that you won't get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer. Wendell Berry Time, Good, God Add to Collection 16 It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits. Wendell Berry Daily, Death, Breakfast Add to Collection 17 The atmosphere, the earth, the water and the water cycle - those things are good gifts. The ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are good gifts. We have to regard them as gifts because we couldn't make them. We have to regard them as good gifts because we couldn't live without them. Wendell Berry Water, Good, Earth Add to Collection 18 Why should conservationists have a positive interest in... farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat. Wendell Berry Positive, Farming, Why Add to Collection 19 Urban conservationists may feel entitled to be unconcerned about food production because they are not farmers. But they can't be let off so easily, for they are all farming by proxy. Wendell Berry Food, Farming, May Add to Collection 20 The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. Wendell Berry Death, Growth, Maturity Add to Collection 21 The latest technology is not always good for anything except to the producers of the technology. Wendell Berry Technology, Good, Always Add to Collection 22 Annual plants are nature's emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established. Wendell Berry Nature, Service, Medical Add to Collection 23 It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. Wendell Berry Learn, Better, Ourselves Add to Collection 24 The two great aims of industrialism - replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy - seem close to fulfillment. Wendell Berry Technology, Great, Small Add to Collection 1 2 next › last »
