Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell E. Berryis an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 August 1934
CityHenry County, KY
CountryUnited States of America
The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance-almost is the revelation of ignorance.
Our obsession with security is a measure of the power we have granted the future to hold over us.
Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous.
The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.
The form of a poem is invisible. A poem is not an "object." This is hard to accept in a mechanical age.
I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place. I find no peace or grace. We sell the world to buy fire, our way lighted by burning men....
All we can do to prepare rightly for tomorrow is to do the right thing today.
It is better to buy from a small, privately owned local store than from a chain store. It is better to buy a good product than a bad one. Do not buy anything you don't need. Do as much as you can for yourself. If you cannot do something for yourself, see if you have a neighbor who can do it for you. Do everything you can to see that your money stays as long as possible in the local community.
There are some things the arrogant mind does not see; it is blinded by its vision of what it desires.
Reverence makes it possible to be whole, though ignorant. It is the wholeness of understanding.
If we are to have a culture as resilient and competent in the face of necessity as it needs to be, then it must somehow involve within itself a ceremonious generosity toward the wilderness of natural force and instinct. The farm must yield a place to the forest, not as a wood lot, or even as a necessary agricultural principle but as a sacred grove - a place where the Creation is let alone, to serve as instruction, example, refuge; a place for people to go, free of work and presumption, to let themselves alone. (pg. 125, The Body and the Earth)
You cannot devalue the body and value the soul Or value anything else.
The hierarchy of power is not the same as the hierarchy of value. A good human is higher than the animals on both scales; an evil human is high on the scale of power, but at the very bottom of the scale of values.
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.