Wendell Berry Quotes

If you want to relax, watch the clouds pass by if you're laying on the grass, or sit in front of the creek; just doing nothing and having those still moments is what really rejuvenates the body.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The trees, the flowers, the plants grow in silence. The stars, the sun, the moon move in silence. Silence gives us a new perspective.

Speak not, move not, but listen, the sky is full of gold. No ripple on the river, no stir in field or fold, All gleams but naught doth glisten, but the far-off unseen sea. Forget days past, heart broken, put all memory by! No grief on the green hillside, no pity in the sky, Joy that may not be spoken fills mead and flower and tree.

When the voices of children are heard on the greenAnd laughing is heard on the hill,My heart is at rest within my breastAnd everything else is still.

Nature is the clearest source of solitude. The greatness of nature can overwhelm the insignificant chatter by which we measure most of our days. If you have the wisdom and the courage to go to nature alone, the larger rhythms, the eternal hum, will make itself known all the sooner. When you have found it, it will always be there for you. The peace without will become the peace within, and you will be able to return to it in your heart wherever you find yourself.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.

In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry, of life.

Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

My relationship to plants becomes closer and closer. They make me quiet; I like to be in their company.

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?

For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature's finest balm.

Unending joy is actually closer to us than our own skin, and there is nothing we have to do or get or be to experience it. All we have to do is stop driving it away.

At home, I love reaching out into that absolute silence, when you can hear the owl or the wind.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

Quietness is the beginning of virtue. To be silent is to be beautiful. Stars do not make a noise.

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.

I like gardening - it's a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.

Nature is where my heart is.

You can't be unhappy in the middle of a big, beautiful river.

When you see the ocean and the infinite, it empties your mind.

Meditation means to be free from all phenomena and calmness means to be internally unperturbed. There will be calmness when one is free from external objects and is not perturbed.