Quotes from Wendell Berry

it is by the place we've got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven.

he gave up the idea that there is a better place somewhere else. There is no better place than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we've got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven.

To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one's part in it anew.

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.

We have, in fact, been turning our country into an economy as fast as possible, and we have been doing so by an unaccounted squandering of its actual, its natural and its cultural, wealth.

The Wild Geese (excerpt) 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.

So we stood there, not knowing either how to stay or how to go, and felt the weight of that failure.

A lamplit table spread Old hospitality Of cheese and wine and bread. - 1993 V Remembering Evia

Every community needs to learn how much of the local land is locally owned, and how much is available for local needs and uses.

having returned from the woods, we remember with regret its restfulness. For all creatures there are in place, hence at rest.   In their most strenuous striving, sleeping and waking, dead and living, they are at rest.   In the circle of the human we are weary with striving, and are without rest.

Every day you have less reason Not to give yourself away.

Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry and other bad habits.