# Wendell Berry - Quotes: 66 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry ## Books - [A Continuous Harmony](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/a-continuous-harmony.md) — 3 quotes - [Another Turn of the Crank](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/another-turn-of-the-crank.md) — 2 quotes - [Citizenship Papers](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/citizenship-papers.md) — 21 quotes - [Given](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/given.md) — 4 quotes - [Life Is a Miracle](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/life-is-a-miracle.md) — 4 quotes - [Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/sex-economy-freedom-community.md) — 4 quotes - [Standing by Words](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/standing-by-words.md) — 2 quotes - [The Long-Legged House](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-long-legged-house.md) — 8 quotes - [The Way of Ignorance](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-way-of-ignorance.md) — 4 quotes - [What Are People For?](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/what-are-people-for.md) — 14 quotes ## Recently added quotes > A mind that has confronted ruin for years > > Is half or more a ruined mind. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/given/a-mind-that.md) > 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. The first muse is the one mainly listened to in a cheap-energy civilization, in which “economic health” depends on the assumption that everything desirable lies within easy reach of anyone. To hear the second muse one must move outside the cheap-energy enclosure. It is the willingness to hear the second muse that keeps us cheerful in our work. To hear only the first is to live in the bitterness of disappointment. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/standing-by-words/there-are-it-seems.md) > Small creatures die because > > larger creatures are hungry. > > How superior to this > > human confusion of greed > > and creed, blood and fire. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/given/small-creatures-die.md) > The most insistent and formidable concern of agriculture, wherever it is taken seriously, is the distinct individuality of every farm, every field on every farm, every farm family, and every creature on every farm. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-way-of-ignorance/the-most-insistent.md) > The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-way-of-ignorance/the-ability-to-speak.md) > To farm is to be placed absolutely. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-way-of-ignorance/to-farm-is.md) > In the effort to tell a whole story, to see it whole and clear, I have had to imagine more than I have known. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-way-of-ignorance/in-the-effort.md) > Sit and be still > > until in the time > > of no rain you hear > > beneath the dry wind's > > commotion in the trees > > the sound of flowing > > water among the rocks, > > a stream unheard before, > > and you are where > > breathing is prayer. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/given/sit-and-be-still.md) > Ask the world to reveal its quietude — > > not the silence of machines when they are still, > > but the true quiet by which birdsongs, > > trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms > > become what they are, and are nothing else. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/given/ask-the-world.md) > 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 that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/standing-by-words/it-may-be-then.md) > A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. Unlike a person, a corporation does not age. It does not arrive, as most persons finally do, at a realization of the shortness and smallness of human lives; it does not come to see the future as the lifetime of the children and grandchildren of anybody in particular. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/citizenship-papers/a-corporation-essentially.md) > In a modern war, fought with modern weapons and on the modern scale, neither side can limit to “the enemy” the damage that it does. These wars damage the world. We know enough by now to know that you cannot damage a part of the world without damaging all of it. Modern war has not only made it impossible to kill “combatants” without killing “noncombatants,” it has made it impossible to damage your enemy without damaging yourself. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/citizenship-papers/in-a-modern.md)