To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. Wendell Berry More Quotes by Wendell Berry More Quotes From Wendell Berry 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 poverty disease land 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. Wendell Berry wildflowers dream men I think the issues of identity mostly are poppycock. We are what we have done, which includes our promises, includes our hopes, but promises first. Wendell Berry issues promise thinking Our model citizen is a sophisticate who, before puberty, understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato Wendell Berry citizens age baby O Thou, Far off and here, whole and broken, Who in necessity and in bounty wait, Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken, By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate. Wendell Berry garden light dark However destructive may be the policies of the government and the methods and products of the corporations, the root of the problem is always found to be found in private life. We must learn to see that every problem that concerns us as conservationists always leads straight to the question of how we live. The world is being destroyed, no doubt about it, by the greed of the rich and powerful. It is also being destroyed by popular demand. Wendell Berry government powerful roots The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly. Wendell Berry exactly-is ability speak In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover. Wendell Berry dark winter war Rural poverty happens because people aren't being paid to take adequate care of their places. There's lots of work to do here. And you can't afford to pay anybody to do it! If you depress the price of the products of the place below a certain level, people can't afford to maintain it. And that's the rural dilemma. Wendell Berry depressing levels people When you have large-scale legitimated violence in a place that is divided as profoundly and bitterly as Kentucky was, the legitimate violence can cause illegitimate violence, a terrible local heartlessness and cruelty that feeds on itself and goes on and on. Wendell Berry kentucky causes violence We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy. Wendell Berry abuse fuel energy To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic plants and animals. And so it appears that most and perhaps all of industrial agriculture's manifest failures are the result of an attempt to make the land produce without husbandry. Wendell Berry husband land animal In losing stewardship we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of creation. Wendell Berry environmental fellowship losing I would like you to show me, if you can, where the line can be drawn between an organism and it's environment. The environment is in you. It's passing through you. You're breathing it in and out. You and every other creature. Wendell Berry breathing environment lines A liberal education rests on the assumption that nature and human nature do not change very much or very fast and that one therefore needs to understand the past. Wendell Berry assumption past needs The form of a poem is invisible. A poem is not an "object." This is hard to accept in a mechanical age. Wendell Berry invisible accepting age We are living even now among punishments and ruins. Wendell Berry ruins punishment Physical health doesn't exist apart from the health of other things. Health ultimately involves the community, and the community ultimately involves the place and natural life of that place, so that real health is harmony with the world. Wendell Berry community real world Let me say and not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there. Wendell Berry let-me speech world We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know. Wendell Berry life people needs
