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| Wendell Berry |
“There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.”
“Can we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the love of God? Perhaps some of us would like to think so, but in fact this destruction is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations. (from 'Compromise, Hell!' published in the November/December 2004 issue of ORION magazine)”
“What I stand for is what I stand on.”
“A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.”
“Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.”
“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”
“Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call "the economy" or "the free market" is less and less distinguishable from warfare.”
“The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality.”
“There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot.”
― Remembering
“Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love. That is the truest thing they ever see, for without it life is death.”
― from Jayber Crow
“Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.”
“If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line - starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past the appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circling or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will.”
― from Jayber Crow
“Some nights in the midst of this loneliness I swung among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone.”
― from Jayber Crow
“This massive ascendancy of corporate power over democratic process is probably the most ominous development since the end of World War II, and for the most part "the free world" seems to be regarding it as merely normal.”
― Bringing it to the Table: Writings on Farming and Food
“What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food?”
“The mercy of the world is you don't know what's going to happen.”
― from Jayber Crow
“The soil under the grass is dreaming of a young forest, and under the pavement the soil is dreaming of grass.”
― Given
“The music, while it lasted, brought a new world into being.”
― from Jayber Crow
“Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.”
“For the sake of “job creation,” in Kentucky, and in other backward states, we have lavished public money on corporations that come in and stay only so long as they can exploit people here more cheaply than elsewhere. The general purpose of the present economy is to exploit, not to foster or conserve. (from 'Compromise, Hell!' published in the November/December 2004 issue of ORION magazine)”
“To mind being disliked by a woman you don’t desire and are not married to is yet another serious failure of common sense.”
― from Jayber Crow
“Thinking is the most overrated human activity.”
“Jesus' military career has never compelled my belief.”
― from Jayber Crow
“It is not a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that the world is always passing and irrecoverable, to be known only in loss. To love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain.”
― from Jayber Crow
“She would do a mans work when she needed to, but she lived and died without ever putting on a pair of pants. She wore dresses. Being a widow, she wore them black. Being a woman of her time she wore them long. the girls of her day I think must have been like well wrapped gifts to be opened by their husbands on their wedding night, a complete surprise. 'Well! What's this!?”
“He imagines a necessary joy in things that must fly to eat.”
“We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them.
(pg. 43, "The Unsettling of America")”
― The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
“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.”
“I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a "hypaethral book," such as Thoreau talked about - a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.”
― The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
“and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else.”
“The promoters of the global economy...see nothing odd or difficult about unlimited economic growth or unlimited consumption in a limited world.”
― from Another Turn of the Crank
“Want of imagination makes things unreal enough to be destroyed. By imagination I mean knowledge and love. I mean compassion. People of power kill children, the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination. They have power. Can you have power and imagination at the same time? Can you kill people you don’t know and have compassion for them at the same time?”
― from Hannah Coulter
“I have always loved a window, especially an open one.”
― from Jayber Crow
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?
“The river's injury is its shape.”
“It's sad that we live in a society that has the refrain 'thank God it's Friday, that means you despise 5/7ths of your life.”
“When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.
When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.”
“The food industrialists have by now persuaded millions of consumers to prefer food that is already prepared. They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into your mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so.”
“A nuclear reactor is a proposed "solution" to "the energy problem." But like all big-technological "solutions," this one "solves" a single problem by causing many...
A garden, on the other hand, is a solution that leads to other solutions. It is a part of the limitless pattern of good health and good sense.”
― The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural
“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”
― Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
“My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.”
― The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
“You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a little at a time.'
And how long is that going to take?'
I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.'
That could be a long time.'
I will tell you a further mystery,' he said. 'It may take longer.”
― from Jayber Crow
“For the sake of “job creation,” in Kentucky, and in other backward states, we have lavished public money on corporations that come in and stay only so long as they can exploit people here more cheaply than elsewhere. The general purpose of the present economy is to exploit, not to foster or conserve. (from 'Compromise, Hell!' published in the November/December 2004 issue of ORION magazine)”
More at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry
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