[T]he assumption is that we can first set demons at large, and then, somehow, become smart enough to control them. This is not childishness. It is not even “human weakness.” It is a kind of idiocy, but perhaps we will not cope with it and save ourselves until we regain the sense to call it evil.
– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | People, Land, and Community p.183
These ways of marriage, kinship, friendship, and neighborhood surround us with forbiddings; they are forms of bondage, and involved in our humanity is always the wish to escape … But involved in our humanity also is the warning that we can escape only into loneliness and meaninglessness.
– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | Men and Women in Search of Common Ground p.141
More and more it has seemed to me that the idea of an individual, the idea that there is someone to be known, separate from the relationships, is simply an error.
– Mary Catherine Bateson quoted by Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | Men and Women in Search of Common Ground p.138
Neither marriage, nor kinship, nor friendship, nor neighborhood can exist with a life expectancy that is merely convenient.
– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | Men and Women in Search of Common Ground p.136
We must study the forest.
– Sir Albert Howard quoted in Wendell Berry’s The Art of the Commonplace | The Body and the Earth p.125
Invariably the failure of organized religions, by which they cut themselves off from mystery and therefore sanctity, lies in the attempt to impose an absolute division between faith and doubt, to make belief perform as knowledge; when they forbid their prophets to go into the wilderness, they lose the possibility of renewal.
– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | The Body and the Earth p.124
The Bible’s aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony.
– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | The Body and the Earth p.104
For many of the churchly, the life of the spirit is reduced to a dull preoccupation with getting to Heaven. At best, the world is no more than an embarrassment and a trial to the spirit, which is otherwise radically separated from it. The true lover of God must no be burdened with any care or respect for His works. While the body goes about its business of destroying the earth, the soul is supposed to lie back and wait for Sunday, keeping itself free of earthly contaminants. While the body exploits other bodies, the soul stands aloof, free from sin, crying to the gawking bystandersL “I am not enjoying it!” As far as this sort of “religion” is concerned, the body is no more than the lusterless container of the soul, a mere “package,” that will nevertheless light up in eternity, forever cool and shiny as a neon cross.
– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | The Body and the Earth p.104
I would rather go to the government with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied.
– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | Think Little p.84
“I knew a man who, in the age of chainsaw, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was a healthier and a saner man than I am. I shall let his memory trouble my thoughts.”
– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | Feminism, the Body, and the Machine p.80
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