Quote

I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place. I find no peace or grace. We sell the world to buy fire, our way lighted by burning men.

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
Things
Grace
Never
Fire
Men
Simple
Lighted
World
Peace
Wholly
Place
Sell
Find
Burning
Self
Sells
Way
Lack

More quotes by Wendell Berry

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It is possible, I think, to say that... a Christian agriculture [is] formed upon the understanding that it is sinful for people to misuse or destroy what they did not make. The Creation is a unique, irreplaceable gift, therefore to be used with humility, respect, and skill.
Wendell Berry
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Eaters must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.
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We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?
Wendell Berry
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You cannot affirm the power plant and condemn the smokestack, or affirm the smoke and condemn the cough
Wendell Berry
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It would not do for the consumer to know that the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot, helping to pollute the local streams. Or that the calf that yielded the veal cutlet on her plate spent its life in a box in which it did not have room to turn around.
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The connections between people and land are dangerously oversimplified and mainly technological.
Wendell Berry
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You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a little at a time.' And how long is that going to take?' I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.' That could be a long time.' I will tell you a further mystery,' he said. 'It may take longer.
Wendell Berry
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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.
Wendell Berry
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Thinking is the most overrated human activity.
Wendell Berry
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You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.
Wendell Berry
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It is wrong to condemn people for doing a thing and then offer no alternative but failure. A person could get mad about that.
Wendell Berry
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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.
Wendell Berry
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Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.
Wendell Berry
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You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.
Wendell Berry
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A man who does not ask to much become the promise of his land. His marriage married to his place, he waits and does not stray.
Wendell Berry
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Willing to die you give up your will keep still, until moved by what moves all else, you move.
Wendell Berry
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The world is whole beyond human knowing.
Wendell Berry
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From the union of power and money, from the union of power and secrecy, from the union of government and science, from the union of government and art, from the union of science and money, from the union of ambition and ignorance, from the union of genius and war, from the union of outer space and inner vacuity, the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.
Wendell Berry
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We conservatives bemoan the decline in values that has besieged our society. Why then should we not abhor the lack of morality involved in discharging untested chemicals into the air, ground, and water to alter and harm, to whatever degree, human life and wildlife? As a conservative, I do abhor it.
Wendell Berry
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The soil under the grass is dreaming of a young forest, and under the pavement the soil is dreaming of grass.
Wendell Berry