Marriage is a perilous and fearful effort, it seems to me.… It creates pain that it is the only cure for. It is the only comfort for its hardships.… Though we had our troubles, we had them in a true perspective. The universe, as we could see any night, is unimaginably large, and mostly empty, and mostly dark. We knew we needed to be together more than we needed to be apart.

About Wendell Berry

Wendell Erdman Berry (August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land (1981) and The Unsettling of America...

More quotations from Wendell Berry

In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.

—Wendell Berry

Our present idea of freedom is only the freedom to do as we please: to sell ourselves for a high salary, a home in the suburbs, and idle weekends. But that is a freedom dependent upon affluence, which is in turn dependent upon the rapid consumption of exhaustible supplies. The other kind of freedom is the freedom to take care of ourselves and of each other.

—Wendell Berry

Be joyful / though you have considered all the facts.

—Wendell Berry

facts joy

As long as there are some people who wish to believe… that they are too good to do their own work and clean up after themselves, then somebody else is going to have to do the work and the cleaning up.… If some people grow rich by making things to throw away, then many other people will have to empty the garbage cans and make the trip to the dump.

—Wendell Berry

Eating with the fullest pleasure—pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance—is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.

—Wendell Berry

More quotations tagged with “comfort”

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

—Kurt Vonnegut

maturity age comfort

I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I’ve been. How comforting the presence of another human being can be.

—Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games

loneliness presence companionship comfort

The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or less. Did most people want a house of living things at night, to know that in the dark around them other warm bodies slept?

Such a house could even be the whole world.

—Lydia Millet

presence home comfort

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

—George Bernard Shaw

sadness wealth comfort

The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live in trapped loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation of the last, every moment smoothly following the the gentle curves of societal norms. we act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us.

And no, I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to jolly myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of some day easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up.

This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: Fuck. That. Shit.

—Randall Munroe

wonder fear power change boredom comfort possibilities loops societal norms

History

23 Nov 2014 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

Marriage is a perilous and fearful effort, it seems to me. . . . It creates pain that it is the only cure for. It is the only comfort for its hardships. . . . Though we had our troubles, we had them in a true perspective. The universe, as we could see any night, is unimaginably large, and mostly empty, and mostly dark. We knew we needed to be together more than we needed to be apart.