Sabbaths Quotes

“Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cezanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he’s alive
forever, this instant, and may be.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“now when I walk here
alone, the thought of you goes with me;
my mind reaches towards yours
across the distance and through time.

No mortal mind’s complete within itself,
but minds must speak and answer,
as ours must, on the subject of this place,
our history here, summoned
as we are to the correction
of old wrong in this soil, thinned
and broken, and in our minds.

You have seen on these gullied slopes
the piles of stones mossy with age,
dragged out of furrows long ago
by men now names on stones,
who cleared and broke these fields,
saw them go to ruin, learned nothing
from the trees they saw return
to hold the ground again.

But here is a clearing we have made
at no cost to the world
and to our gain- a re-clearing
after forty years: the thicket
cut level with the ground,
grasses and clovers sown
into the last year’s fallen leaves,
new pasture coming to the sun
as the woods plants, lovers of shade,
give way: change made
without violence to the ground.

At evening birdcall
flares at the woods’ edge;
flight arcs into the opening
before nightfall.

Out of disordered history
a little coherence, a pattern
comes, like the steadying
of a rhythm on a drum, melody
coming to it from time
to time, waking over it,
as from a bird at dawn
or nightfall, the long outline
emerging through the momentary,
as the hill’s hard shoulder
shows through trees
when the leaves fall.

The field finds its source
in the old forest, in the thicket
that returned to cover it,
in the dark wilderness of its soil,
in the dispensations of the sky,
in our time, in our minds-
the righting of what was done wrong.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“In choosing what is difficult
we are free, the mind too
making its little flight
out from the shadow into the clear
in time between work and sleep.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, 1987-90

“Why must the gate be narrow?
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.
To come into the woods you must leave behind
the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“The dark
Again has prayed the light to come
Down into it, to animate
And move it in its heaviness.

So what was still and dark wakes up,
Becomes intelligent, moves, names
Itself by hunger and by kind...”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“Beyond all history that he knows,
Where trees like great saints stand in time,
Eternal in their patience. Loss
Has rectified the songs that come

Into this columned room, and he
Only in silence, nothing in hand
Comes here. A generosity
Is here by which the fallen stand.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“May our kind live to breathe
Air worthy of the breath
Of all singers that sing
In joy of their making,
Light of the risen year,
Songs worthy of the ear
Of breathers worth their air,
Of makers worth their hire.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“Bewildered in our timely dwelling place,
Where we arrive by work, we stay by grace.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“Though we invite, this healing comes
in answer to another voice than ours;
a strength not ours returns”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“The healing
that is ours and nature’s will come
if we are willing, if we are patient,
if we know the way, if we will do the work.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“Though the spring is late and cold,
though uproar of greed
and malice shudders in the sky,
pond, stream, and treetop raise
their ancient songs;
the robin molds her mud nest
with her breast; the air
is bright with breath
of bloom, wise loveliness that asks
nothing of the season but to be.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“The warmth has come.
The doors have opened. Flower and song
Embroider ground and air, lead me
Beside the healing field that waits;
Growth, death, and a restoring form
Of human use will make it well.
But I go on, beyond, higher
In the hill’s fold, forget the time
I come from and go to, recall
This grove left out of all account,
A place enclosed in song.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“In this brief Sabbath now, time fit

To be eternal. Such a bliss
Of bloom’s no ornament, but root
And light, a saving loveliness,
Starred firmament here underfoot.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“From cloud to sea to cloud, I climb
The deer road through the leafless trees
Under a wind that batters limb
On limb, still roaring as it has

Two nights and days, cold in slow spring.
But ancient song in a wild throat
Recalls itself and starts to sing
In storm-cleared light...”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“And I, through woods and fields, through fallen days
Am passing to where I belong:
At home, at ease, and well,
In Sabbaths of this place
Almost invisible,
Toward which I go from song to song.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“Whatever happens,
those who have learned
to love one another
have made their way
to the lasting world
and will not leave,
whatever happens.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

“Why must the gate be narrow?
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.
To come into the woods you must leave behind
the six day's world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes.
You must come without weapon or tool, alone,
expecting nothing, remembering nothing,
into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf.”
― Wendell Berry, Sabbaths