Quote

The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.

Wendell Berry

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Wendell Berry
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: August 5
Author
Farmer
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Henry County
Kentucky
Wendell Berry
Wendell Erdman Berry
Community
Use
Often
Lacking
Care
Primaries
Going
Primary
Good
Motive
Always
Affection
Land

More quotes by Wendell Berry

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We are now, measurably, reducing the availability of these life-supporting goods which we can think of (though only on the conditions of good health and good care) as self-renewing or sustainable. We are also destroying rapidly the supplies of the fossil fuels, which are limited and not renewable, and on which we have become totally dependent.
Wendell Berry
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The world is so full and abundant it is like a pregnant woman carrying a child in one arm and leading another by the hand. Every puddle in the lane is ringed with sipping butterflied that fly up in flutter when you walk past in the late morning on your way to get the mail.
Wendell Berry
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Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in justice or in affirmation of rights or in defense of peace do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation.
Wendell Berry
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Sabbath observance invites us to stop. It invites us to rest. It asks us to notice that while we rest, the world continues without our help. It invites us to delight in the world's beauty and abundance.
Wendell Berry
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The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.
Wendell Berry
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We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibilities that have been turned over to governments, corporations, and specialists, and put those fragments back together again in our own minds and in our families and household and neighborhoods.
Wendell Berry
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We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true.
Wendell Berry
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I like the way that the history of the tree shapes the tree. There's no distinction between the tree and its history. You can lose yourself in that thought.
Wendell Berry
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Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
Wendell Berry
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We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.
Wendell Berry
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As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words my property is that arrangement. The thoughts in this book, on the contrary, are not mine. They came freely to me, and I give them freely away. I have no intellectual property, and I think that all claimants to such property are theives.
Wendell Berry
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It's mighty hard right now to think of anything that's precious that isn't endangered. 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
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Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous.
Wendell Berry
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Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.
Wendell Berry
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We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.
Wendell Berry
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Give your approval to all you cannot understand.
Wendell Berry
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The world is whole beyond human knowing.
Wendell Berry
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Corn and bean people, I'm afraid, have extremely specialized minds.
Wendell Berry
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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
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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