“There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, “It is yet more difficult than you thought.”

“Eating is an agricultural act.”

— Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating," in What Are People For? (North Point Press, 1990)

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no …”

— Wendell Berry, "The Real Work," widely excerpted from Standing by Words: Essays (North Point Press, 1983)

“Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be …”

— Wendell Berry, "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front," in The Country of Marriage (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973)

“The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing …”

— Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (Sierra Club Books, 1977)

“The earth is what we all have in common.”

— Wendell Berry, "The Body and the Earth," in The Unsettling of America (Sierra Club Books, 1977)

“We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our …”

— Wendell Berry, "A Poem of Difficult Hope," in What Are People For? (North Point Press, 1990)