Quote

The river is of the earth and it is free. It is rigorously embanked and bound, and yet it is free. To hell with restraint, it says, I have got to be going. It will grind out its dams. It will go over or around them. They will become pieces.

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
Free
Fishes
Rigorously
Around
Boat
Dams
Become
Bounds
Grind
Earth
Rivers
Restraint
Going
Sea
Lakes
Pieces
Fishing
Says
Bound
Hell
River

More quotes by Wendell Berry

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One cannot be aware both of the history of Christian war and of the contents of the gospels without feeling that something is amiss.
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The ecological principle in agriculture is to connect the genius of the place, to fit the farming to the farm.
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Eating is an agricultural act.
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Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
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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.
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To be patient in an emergency is a terrible trial.
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I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard.
Wendell Berry
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A good community insures itself by trust, by good faith and good will, by mutual help. A good community, in other words, is a good local economy.
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Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
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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?
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This, I thought, is what is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means that your will and God's will may not be the same. It means there's a good possibility that you won't get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer.
Wendell Berry
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Without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice.
Wendell Berry
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Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Wendell Berry
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Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters at the windowpanes. It is like standing a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door.
Wendell Berry
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We are far more concerned about the desecration of the flag than we are about the desecration of our land.
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. And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease.
Wendell Berry
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The Christian gospel is a summons to peace, calling for justice beyond anger, mercy beyond justice, forgiveness beyond mercy, love beyond forgiveness.
Wendell Berry
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To define knowledge as merely empirical is to limit one's ability to know it enfeebles one's ability to feel and think.
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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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