The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

by Wendell Berry

All that any of us may know of ourselves is to be known in relation to this place.

When I have thought of kindness or cruelty, weariness or exuberance, devotion or betrayal, carelessness or care, doggedness or awkwardness or grace, I have had in my mind’s eye the men and women of this place, their faces and gestures and movements.

I began more seriously than ever to learn the names of things – the wild plants and animals, the natural processes, the local places – and to articulate my observations and memories.

Short-term practicality is long-term idiocy.

When we give our plows such brand names as ‘Sod Blaster,’ we are imposing on their use conceptual limits that raise the likelihood that they will be used destructively. When we speak of man’s ‘war against nature,’ or of a ‘peace offensive,’ we are accepting the limitations of a metaphor that suggests, and even proposes, violent solutions.

It grows by returning again and again to the landmarks of its cultural birthright, the works that have proved worthy of devoted attention.

‘Read not the Times. Read the Eternities,’ Thoreau said.

I am saying, then, that literacy – the mastery of language and the knowledge of books – is not an ornament, but a necessity. It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power.