Wendell Berry Quotes

The human being is constantly torn from calm and peace of simple existence by two things; wanting what you don't have, or disliking what you have.

I'm full of restlessness. Not lonely, exactly - my head is racing with ideas. But it is that old treacherous feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, and I'm left out.

I constantly felt (as I suppose many an ambitious girl has felt) a thumping from within unanswered by any beckoning from without.

I wasn't unhappy, but I was a little like: 'Is this it? Really?' I was thirsty.

The discontented man finds no easy chair.

So much of my intention with songs is to voice a continual dissatisfaction, or at least to claw my way out of it.

It's a blessing and a curse, 'cause I'm never satisfied, so I continually want to outdo myself. But still, I'm never happy.

A spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.

Who with a little cannot be content, endures an everlasting punishment.

I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me.

Either in conflict with others or in harmony with them, we go through life like a runaway horse, unable to stop.

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.

One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.

I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.

There she is, lying in front of me, smoking a cigarette, thinking of something or someone else. And that’s how she is stuck in my mind forever. We are two explorers in the dark. Mapless and hopeless. Alone together.

When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he'd even bothered.

I never felt at peace with anything or anybody.

Restlessness is the hallmark of existence.

I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.

I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.

With me; it's just a genetic dissatisfaction with everything.

I used to think I was unstable, because I had this thirst for something. I could never figure out what it was. I couldn’t sleep at night, and I always wanted to be somewhere else. I have a window tattooed, this little box, and it’s because wherever I was, I wanted to be somewhere else. And, I always saw myself, wherever I was in life, staring out the window.

Looking about me, listening and recalling what the day had been like, I suddenly felt a secret unease in my heart and raised my eyes to the sky, but even in the sky there seemed to be no tranquillity. Dotted with stars, it constantly quivered and danced and shivered.

A discontented man knowes not where to sit easie.