Wendell Berry Quotes

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.

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.

It may be that when we no longer know... which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

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.

Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

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.

We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.

You cannot save the land apart from the people, or the people apart from the land.

Unexpected wonders happen, not on schedule, or when you expect or want them to happen, but if you keep hanging around, they do happen.

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.

Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it.

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

If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life: worms, fungi, microorganisms of all kinds ... Given only the health of the soil, nothing that dies is dead for very long.

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.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

When I rise up, let me rise up joyful like a bird. When I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf.

True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One's inner voices become audible... In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives.

The soil under the grass is dreaming of a young forest, and under the pavement the soil is dreaming of grass.

Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.

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

You can't know where life will take you, but you can commit to a direction

The Earth is what we all have in common.

I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water.

We can make ourselves whole only by accepting our partiality, by living within our limits, by being humans not by trying to be gods.

There is much good work to be done by every one of us and we must begin to do it.

Be joyful because it is humanly possible.

Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

I have always loved a window, especially an open one.

It is only by understanding the cultural complexity and largeness of the concept of agriculture that we can see the threatening diminishments implied by the term 'agribusiness.'

The world is not given by our fathers but borrowed from our children.

If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.

Under the pavement the dirt is dreaming of grass.

If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are.

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.

I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.

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.

The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

I dream of a quiet man / who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows / where the rarest wildflowers / are blooming, and who goes, / and finds that he is smiling / not by his own will.

If you eat, you are involved in agriculture.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.

Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.

To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.

I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.

For the true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment the size of its income or even the statistics of its productivity but the good health of the land.