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Reverence makes it possible to be whole, though ignorant. It is the wholeness of understanding.

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
Respect
Possible
Though
Understanding
Makes
Whole
Wholeness
Reverence
Ignorant

More quotes by Wendell Berry

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A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.
Wendell Berry
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The chance you had is the life you've got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people's lives, ...but you mustn't wish for another life. You mustn't want to be somebody else.
Wendell Berry
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The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.
Wendell Berry
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I would consider myself simply a critic of the market economy. My standard isn't primarily political. First of all, it's ecological. And then I get to matters that are social and cultural.
Wendell Berry
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When you are new at sheep-raising and your ewe has a lamb, your impulse is to stay there and help it nurse and see to it and all. After a while you know that the best thing you can do is walk out of the barn.
Wendell Berry
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Unexpected wonders happen, not on schedule, or when you expect or want them to happen, but if you keep hanging around, they do happen.
Wendell Berry
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There is no sense and no sanity in objecting to the desecration of the flag while tolerating and justifying and encouraging as a daily business the desecration of the country for which it stands.
Wendell Berry
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I'd rather rely on mother nature's wisdom than man's cleverness
Wendell Berry
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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
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When there are enough people on the land to use it but not enough to husband it, then the wildness of the soil that we call fertility begins to diminish, and the soil itself begins to flee from us in water and wind.
Wendell Berry
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There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot.
Wendell Berry
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Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health.
Wendell Berry
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I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children...
Wendell Berry
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I’ve been thinking about that question about what city people can do. The main thing is to realize that country people can’t invent a better agriculture by ourselves. Industrial agriculture wasn’t invented by us, and we can’t uninvent it. We’ll need some help with that.
Wendell Berry
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To accept that there is nothing to do is to despair. It is to become in some fundamental way less than human. Those of us who are protesting are protesting in part for our own sake to keep ourselves whole as human beings.
Wendell Berry
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The worst example of rural poverty is that of migrant farm workers. They have no permanent jobs, so they have no equity in the places where they work. They're not shareholders, let alone entrepreneurs. They're not small farmers, they're not market gardeners, they're just temporary - uprooted, isolated, easily exploitable people.
Wendell Berry
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When the self is ones exclusive subject and limit, reference and measure, one has no choice but to make a world of words.
Wendell Berry
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Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
Wendell Berry
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The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.
Wendell Berry
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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.
Wendell Berry