Quote

All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by men who have had little: the fisherman's silence receiving the river's grace, the gardener's musing on rows.

Wendell Berry

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wendell Berry
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: August 5
Author
Farmer
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Henry County
Kentucky
Wendell Berry
Wendell Erdman Berry
Back
Pride
Fisherman
Little
Silence
Gardener
Made
Grace
Contentment
Men
Goes
Excess
Desire
Receiving
Power
River
Musing
Earth
Simplicity
Musings
Littles
Rivers
Rows

More quotes by Wendell Berry

Image
Hunger is a powerful persuader if it happens, and it's conceivable that it could happen. Country people have always known this.
Wendell Berry
Image
You can't know where life will take you, but you can commit to a direction
Wendell Berry
Image
Unless you absolutely have got to do it, don’t buy anything new.
Wendell Berry
Image
To have good farming or good land use of any kind, you have got to have limits. Capitalism doesn't acknowledge limits.
Wendell Berry
Image
The old and honorable idea of 'vocation' is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.
Wendell Berry
Image
Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking even the courage of a personal hatred.
Wendell Berry
Image
And if we ask what are the cultural resources that can inform and sustain a proper creaturely and stewardly awareness of the lives in a farmer's keeping, I believe that we will find them gathered under the heading of husbandry.
Wendell Berry
Image
Our Children no longer learn how to read the great book of Nature from their own direct experience, or how to interact creatively with the seasonal transformations of the planet. They seldom learn where their water come from or where it goes. We no longer coordinate our human celebration with the great liturgy of the heavens.
Wendell Berry
Image
Education in the true sense, of course, is an enablement to serve-both the living human community in its natural household or neighborhood and the precious cultural possessions that the living community inherits or should inherit.
Wendell Berry
Image
So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.
Wendell Berry
Image
Monsanto doesn't care about feeding the world. We have to think about the wage slavery of migrant workers and salary slavery of those who are desperately unhappy.
Wendell Berry
Image
The earth is what we all have in common.
Wendell Berry
Image
I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade.
Wendell Berry
Image
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
Image
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
Image
At home the great delight is to see the clover and grass now growing on places that were bare when we came. These small healings of the ground are my model accomplishment-everything else I do must aspire to that. While I was at that work the world gained with every move I made, and I harmed nothing.
Wendell Berry
Image
Eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as 'consumers.'
Wendell Berry
Image
The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.
Wendell Berry
Image
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.
Wendell Berry
Image
If you eat, you are involved in agriculture.
Wendell Berry