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(E)very man who is not a mere idler or parasite is necessarily some special kind of artist.

– Ananda Coomaraswamy quote by Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace: Christianity and the Survival of Creation p.316

Good human work honors God’s work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God.

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace: Christianity and the Survival of Creation p.312

Throughout the five hundred years since Colombus’s first landfall in the Bahamas, the evangelist has walked beside the conqueror and the merchant, too often blandly assuming that their causes were the same.

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace: Christianity and the Survival of Creation p.305

God too loves material things; He invented them. The Devil’s work is abstraction – not the love of material things, but the love of their quantities.

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace: The Gift of Good Land p.301

Heroic works are meant to be (among other things) instructive and inspiring to ordinary people in ordinary life, and they are, grandly and deeply so. But there are two issues that they are prohibited by their nature from raising: the issue of lifelong devotion and perseverance in unheroic tasks, and the issue of good workmanship or “right livelihood.”

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace: The Gift of Good Land p.300

The drama of ordinary or daily behavior also raises the issue of courage, but it raises at the same time the issue of skill; and, because ordinary behavior lasts so much longer than heroic action, it raises in a more complex and difficult way the issue of perseverance. It may, in some ways, be easier to be a Samson than to be a good husband or wife day after day for fifty years.

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace: The Gift of Good Land p.300

Can we justify secrecy, lying, and burglary in our so-called intelligence organizations and yet preserve openness, honesty, and devotion to principle in the rest of our government? Can we subsidize mayhem in the military establishment and yet have peace, order, and respect for human life in the city streets? Can we degrade all forms of essential work and yet expect the arts and graces to flourish on weekends?

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace: The Use of Energy p.288