Wendell Erdman Berry is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. Profoundly inspirational Wendell Berry quotes will make you look at life differently and help you live a meaningful life.
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Famous Wendell Berry Quotes
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. Wendell Berry
To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival. Wendell Berry
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Wendell Berry
We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough? Wendell Berry
It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.
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
The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. Wendell Berry
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup. Wendell Berry
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. 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
It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. Wendell Berry
There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. Wendell Berry, Given
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. Wendell Berry
You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it. Wendell Berry
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope. Wendell Berry
A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. Wendell Berry
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. 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
You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. Wendell Berry
Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection. Wendell Berry
Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you. Wendell Berry
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
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. Wendell Berry
To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd. Wendell Berry
To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival. Wendell Berry
If we can’t afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we’re in an insurmountable mess. Wendell Berry
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. Wendell Berry
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. Wendell Berry
It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. Wendell Berry
We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it. And to take good care of it, we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it. Wendell Berry
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup. Wendell Berry
The atmosphere, the earth, the water, and the water cycle those things are good gifts. The ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are good gifts. We have to regard them as gifts because we couldn’t make them. We have to regard them as good gifts because we couldn’t live without them. Wendell Berry
To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd. Wendell Berry
All right, every day ain’t going to be the best day of your life, don’t worry about that. If you stick to it you hold the possibility open that you will have better days. Wendell Berry
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
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
The latest technology is not always good for anything except to the producers of the technology. Wendell Berry.
I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Wendell Berry
If we can’t afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we’re in an insurmountable mess. Wendell Berry
There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places. My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts. Wendell Berry
I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Wendell Berry
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
The two great aims of industrialism replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy seem close to fulfillment. Wendell Berry
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
Don’t own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire. Wendell Berry
The latest technology is not always good for anything except to the producers of the technology. Wendell Berry
It is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy. Wendell Berry.
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
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
The two great aims of industrialism replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy seem close to fulfillment. Wendell Berry
Be joyful because it is humanly possible Wendell Berry
An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment. Wendell Berry
Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery. Wendell Berry
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins. Wendell Berry
I don’t believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. Wendell Berry
I’ve had a good life, and was born to and among people I’ve admired and loved. Wendell Berry
What I stand for is what I stand on. Wendell Berry
The only time I’ve been arrested was for opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979. Wendell Berry
Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call ‘the economy’ or ‘the free market’ is less and less distinguishable from warfare. Wendell Berry
I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever. Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. Wendell Berry
Eating is an agricultural act. Wendell Berry
These are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean it more. Wendell Berry
If you don’t know where you’re from, you’ll have a hard time saying where you’re going. Wendell Berry
I’m a writer more than I am a talker. Wendell Berry
The environment is in you You and every other creature. Wendell Berry
We’re all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I’m complicit in the things that I’m trying to oppose. Wendell Berry
People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food Wendell Berry
It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits. Wendell Berry
They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest. Wendell Berry
The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. Wendell Berry
