“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

“The body characterizes everything it touches. What it makes it traces over with the marks of its pulses and breathings, its excitements, hesitations, flaws, and mistakes. On its good work, it leaves the marks of skill, care, and love persisting through hesitations, flaws, and mistakes. And to those of us who love and honor the life of the body in this world, these marks are precious things, necessities of life.”

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | Feminism, the Body, and the Machine p.78

“How far down in the natural order do we have to go to find creatures who raise their young as indifferently as industrial humans now do? Even the English sparrows do not let loose into the streets young sparrows who have no notion of their identity or their adult responsibilities.”

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | Feminism, the Body, and the Machine p.73

“[People] use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.”

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | Racism and the Economy p.61

“The Indian became a redskin, not by loss in battle, but by accepting a dependence on traders that made necessities of industrial goods. This is not merely history. It is a parable.”

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | The Unsettling of America p.38