Quotes from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982

Wendell Berry ·  268 pages

Rating: (1.6K votes)


“It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.”
― Wendell Berry, quote from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982


“At the window he sits and looks out, musing on the river, a little brown hen duck paddling upstream among the windwaves close to the far bank. What he has understood lies behind him like a road in the woods. He is a wilderness looking out at the wild.”
― Wendell Berry, quote from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982


“Through my history's despite
and ruin, I have come
to its remainder, and here
have made the beginning
of a farm intended to become
my art of being here.
By it I would instruct
my wants: they should belong
to each other and to this place.
Until my song comes here
to learn its words, my art
is but the hope of song.

(Part 2 from History is Clearing, p 174)”
― Wendell Berry, quote from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982


“The Satisfactions of the Mad Farmer...the quiet in the woods of a summer morning, the voice of a pewee passing through it like a tight silver wire; ...”
― Wendell Berry, quote from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982


“What I know of spirit is astir in the world. The god I have always expected to appear at the woods' edge, beckoning, I have always expected to be a great relisher of this world, its good grown immortal in his mind.”
― Wendell Berry, quote from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982



“...And yet a knowledge
is here that tenses the throat
as for song: the inheritance
of the ones, alive or once
alive, who stand behind
the ones I have imagined,
who took into their minds
the troubles of this place,
blights of love and race,
but saw a good fate here
and willingly paid its cost,
kept it the best they could,
thought of its good,
and mourned the good they lost.

(From the ending of Where in Clearing, p179)”
― Wendell Berry, quote from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982


“Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.
"We Who Prayed and Wept", p. 211.”
― Wendell Berry, quote from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982


About the author

Wendell Berry
Born place: in Kentucky, The United States
Born date August 5, 1934
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“She turned, pasting a brilliant smile on her face. She was going to charm this man until - until - well, until he was charmed. She opened her mouth to slay him with something utterly witty and sophisticated, but before she could form even a sound, he leaned in closer, his eyes warm and dangerous, and said, "I find myself unbearably curious about that smile." She blinked. If she didn't know better, she'd think that he was trying to charm her. No, she thought with a mental shake of her head. That was impossible. He barely knew her, and while she wasn't the ugliest girl in all of Surrey, she was certainly no siren.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from How to Marry a Marquis


“She was tired. Gravity pulled at her more aggressively than usual. When she closed her eyes, she could feel it, dragging her deeper, deeper. I would have pulled her back. I would have saved her from falling, but she didn’t see my hand.”
― Amy Zhang, quote from Falling into Place


“It was full of luxurious trappings and shiny baubles, and that had blinded me to the fact that nothing about it was real.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge


“Daggers ever at the ready, I went about the day: children fed, linens mended, bedclothes aired. In little ways one conquers fear.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.


“The conventional explanation, that God sends us the burden He knows that we are strong enough to handle it, has it all wrong. Fate, not God, sends us the problem. When we try to deal with it, we find out that we are not strong. We are weak, we get tired, we get angry, overwhelmed. We begin to wonder how we will ever make it through all the years. But when we reach the limits of our own strength, and courage, something unexpected happens. We find reinforcement coming from a source outside of ourselves. And in the knowledge that we are not alone, that God is on our side, we manage to go on.”
― Harold S. Kushner, quote from When Bad Things Happen to Good People


Interesting books

Reaper's Gale
(21K)
Reaper's Gale
by Steven Erikson
Pay It Forward
(20.7K)
Pay It Forward
by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Night Train to Lisbon
(13K)
Night Train to Lisbo...
by Pascal Mercier
Ghost World
(54.5K)
Ghost World
by Daniel Clowes
Misguided Angel
(36K)
Misguided Angel
by Melissa de la Cruz
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
(21.1K)
Antifragile: Things...
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.