I have loved Berry’s writing for a long time. I previously quoted this beautiful poem here.
I was under the impression that “The Peace of Wild Things” was from one of his essays, later turned into a poem, but I could be mistaken. Here are a few other snippets from his writings:
“Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.”
“After a while, though the grief did not go away from us, it grew quiet. What had seemed a storm wailing through the entire darkness seemed to come in at last and lie down.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow: A Novel
“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.”
― Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House
And, definitely a comment suitable for our times:
“The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays