Wendell Berry Quotes

Because things grow. Wherever there is air and light and open space, things grow.

Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development.

I realized that a tree never says, "I have too many branches." It simply digs deeper roots, expands itself to catch more light, and extends itself in multiple directions so as not to be unevenly weighted.

Trees don't grow even, they don't grow straight just however it makes them happy.

You do not explain the tree by telling of the water it has drunk, the minerals it has absorbed, and the sunlight that strengthened it.

A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.

I like everything to happen organically.

Take love easy, as the leaves grow on the trees.

Look at the earth crowded with growth, new and old bursting from their strong roots hidden in the silent, live ground, each seed according to its own kind...each one knowing what to do, each one demanding its own rights on the earth. So artist, you too from the depths of your soul...let your roots creep forth, gaining strength.

It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.

You cannot force growth of human life and civilization, any more than you can force these slow-growing trees. That is the economy of Almighty God, that all good growth is slow growth.

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.

This is the blood's wild tree that grows the intricate and folded rose

Wherever there is a suitable environment for the fulfilment of Life, it will fulfil itself.

The child, making use of all that he finds around him, shapes himself for the future.

When you organize your work and look back at your entire production, it may feel like you're looking at a straight line, but in fact it's nothing like that. The work is very experimental and most of the time it develops like branches. I usually see a capillary, like a tree shape where there are... branches that sort of move because you're not tending to them.

Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.

I so much like real things - the realities that come naturally from the depths of us like - what shall I say? - the way trees grow, from some inner essential principle of them, just expressing itself.

As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.

Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present in looking backward or forward. They are occupied wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence.

One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once, life would collapse. There are simply no definitive answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

It is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

Every leaf of the tree becomes a page of the book, once the heart is opened and it has learnt to read.

Nature doesn't move in a straight line, and as part of nature, neither do we.