Wendell Berry Quotes

I know that collector types can be a pain in the neck and seem perpetually frozen in time - or at least in their parents' basement - but someone has to look out for the past, lest it slip away forever.

You cut off the capacity for grief in your life, and you cut off the joy at the same time. They both come up through the same tunnel. You don't have one without the other.

I lost my mom to breast cancer, and then I lost my father three years later. I thought, 'What am I waiting for?' Motherhood has been the greatest gift of my life.

I didn't actually even really know my grandmother; I must have been 3 or 4 when she died.

I've been blessed in many ways, but none of the heights from football can ever compare to the depths you go through when you lose a child.

Chris had the unique and rare opportunity to be shown during his lifetime how many friends he has and how much they care.

First of all, a lot of people, a lot of women and men, have lost their children. I'm not the only one. But I happen to be blessed that my son gave me all these things to work with so that I get to work out my grief in a way that other people are not able to. So I can't possibly be downtrodden about that.

I miss my son every day a little bit more, but I thank God every day for every second that he was here.

When my father died of cancer in 1991, he left me with the assurance that he was headed to a better place. He used to always tell me that I was getting the raw end of the deal because I had to stick around here.

My mother was really amazing and left me with a whole lot of treasures. I miss her terribly.

the Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don't give ye a mother but once.

If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

It is a blessing as well as a burden to love so much that you can hurt so badly when love is gone.

This glorious union shall not perish! Precious legacy of our fathers, it shall go down honored and cherished to our children. Generations unborn shall enjoy its privileges as we have done; and if we leave them poor in all besides, we will transmit to them the boundless wealth of its blessings!

This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.

And hearts resolved and hands prepared The blessings they enjoy to guard.

Generations hence, parents will take their children to these woods to show them how the land must have looked to the first Pilgrims and pioneers. And as Americans wander through these forests, climb these mountains, they will sense the love and majesty of the Creator of all of that.

Sometimes the only answer to death is lunch.

God bless every soul that we lost. God bless the families who have to endure that loss, and God guide us to our reunion in heaven, and God bless the United States of America.

You don't know what is going to come to you in this world; you have to go on living and worrying. Those who die are pitying us; they are blessing us. Why should you grieve for them?

Traveling makes you realize what an immeasurably nice place much of America could be if only people possessed the same instinct for preservation as they do in Europe.

Weep if you must Parting is hell But life goes on So sing as well.

In all states of dilemma or of difficulty, prayer is an available source. The ship of prayer may sail through all temptations, doubts and fears, straight up to the throne of God; and though she may be outward bound with only griefs, and groans, and sighs, she shall return freighted with a wealth of blessings!