Quote

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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Wendell Berry
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: August 5
Author
Farmer
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Henry County
Kentucky
Wendell Berry
Wendell Erdman Berry
Offer
Offers
Failure
Wrong
Persons
Condemn
Person
Alternative
Thing
Alternatives
People
Mad

More quotes by 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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I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
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It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.
Wendell Berry
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When despair for the world grows in me... I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
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Geese appear high over us, / pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, / as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear / in the ancient faith: what we need / is here. And we pray, not / for new earth or heaven, but to be / quiet in heart, and in eye, / clear. What we need is here.
Wendell Berry
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Returning from the wilderness a man becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forbears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his successors. He embodies the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy.
Wendell Berry
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People need to feed themselves, next they need to feed their own communities.
Wendell Berry
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No individual life is an end in itself. One can live fully only by participating fully in the succession of the generations, in death as well as in life. Some would say (and I am one of them) that we can live fully only by making ourselves answerable to the claims of eternity as to those of time.
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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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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Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible... Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and see if you recognize your neighborhood. The right local questions and answers will be the right global ones. The Amish question, what will this do to our community? tends toward the right answer for the world.
Wendell Berry
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He never complained. He seemed to have no instinct for the making much of oneself that complaining requires.
Wendell Berry
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Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.
Wendell Berry
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You can't be a critic by simply being a griper. One has also to search out the examples of good work.
Wendell Berry
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If the devil doesn't exist... how do you explain that some people are a lot worse than they're smart enough to be?
Wendell Berry
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It is understood that nonhuman creatures adapt to their places or they don't live. And for some reason that I can't figure out, even the biologists have excused our own species from that obligation. I think there's going to be a biological penalty to be paid for that eventually.
Wendell Berry
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Long live gravity! Long live stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces of fantasy capitalism!
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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The most insistent and formidable concern of agriculture, wherever it is taken seriously, is the distinct individuality of every farm, every field on every farm, every farm family, and every creature on every farm.
Wendell Berry
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A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
Wendell Berry