Nature is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may think.
Wendell BerryWhat would be the point of being personally whole in a dismembered society, or personally healthy in a land scalped, eroded and poisoned, or personally free in a world entirely controlled by the government or enlightened by television?
Wendell BerryIf the devil doesn't exist... how do you explain that some people are a lot worse than they're smart enough to be?
Wendell BerryWe enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness. True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. Oneโs inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of oneโs most intimate sources. In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.
Wendell BerryCan we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the love of God? Perhaps some of us would like to think so, but in fact this destruction is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations.
Wendell Berry