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Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry

1

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
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2

For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless.

Wendell Berry Suffering, Why, Sin
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3

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
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4

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
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5

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
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6

I'm a writer more than I am a talker.

Wendell Berry Self Confidence, More, Writer
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7

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
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8

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
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9

An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment.

Wendell Berry Commitment, People, Security
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10

All right, every day ain't going to be the best day of your life, don't worry about that. If you stick to it you hold the possibility open that you will have better days.

Wendell Berry Life, Day, Best
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11

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry Time, History, Peace
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12

I've had a good life, and was born to and among people I've admired and loved.

Wendell Berry Life, Good, Good Life
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13

If we can't afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we're in an insurmountable mess.

Wendell Berry Good, Care, Mess
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14

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

Wendell Berry Hope, Responsibility, Care
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15

We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it. And to take good care of it, we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.

Wendell Berry Love, Good, World
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16

These are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean it more.

Wendell Berry Day, Justice, People
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17

We cannot comprehend what comprehends us.

Wendell Berry Cannot, Comprehend
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18

We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?

Wendell Berry Time, Gardening, Learn
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19

I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever. Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.

Wendell Berry Man, Heart, Walking
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20

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

Wendell Berry Nature, Hope, Survival
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21

There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places. My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts.

Wendell Berry Life, World, Belief
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22

The old and honorable idea of 'vocation' is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.

Wendell Berry Work, Good, God
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23

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
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24

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
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