Wendell Berry Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

The only time I’ve been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.