Quotes from Wendell Berry

O]ne can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality.

Why must the gate be narrow? Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened. To come in among these trees you must leave behind the six days' world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes. You must come without weapon or tool, alone, expecting nothing, remembering nothing, into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf.

I knew what he was doing. He was walking away from his thoughts but his thoughts were staying with him.

Be thankful and repay Growth with good work and care. Work done in gratitude Kindly, and well, is prayer.

Let tomorrow come tomorrow. Not by your will is the house carried through the night. Order is only the possibility of rest.

There appears to be a law that when creatures have reached the level of consciousness, as men have, they must become conscious of the creation; they must learn how they fit into it and what its needs are and what it requires of them, or else pay a terrible penalty: the spirit of the creation will go out of them, and they will become destructive; the very earth will depart from them and go where they cannot follow.

Those thoughts come to me in the night, those thought and thoughts of becoming sick or helpless, of the nursing home, of lingering death. I gnaw again the old bones of the fear of what is to come, and grieve with a sisterly grief over Grandmam and Mrs. Feltner and the other old women who have gone before. Finally, as a gift, as a mercy, I remember to pray, 'Thy will be done,' and then again I am free and can go to sleep.

Love in this world doesn't come out of thin air. It is not something thought up. Like ourselves, it grows out of the ground. It has a body and a place.

I'd had the idea, once, that if I could get the chance before I died I would read all the good books there were. Now I began to see that I wasn't apt to make it. This disappointed me, for I really wanted to read them all. But it consoled me in a way too; I could see that if I got them all read and had no more surprises in that line, I would have been sorry.

Well, honey, everybody has to die sometime.

Why should anybody wait to do what is right until everybody does it?

Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love.