Diane Ackerman Quotes

Quotes about:

• I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

  Diane Ackerman

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  61 Copy quote

• I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

  Diane Ackerman

  Commitment, Compassion, Hatred

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “I Praise My Destroyer: Poems”, p.3, Vintage

  31 Copy quote

• The great affair, the love affair with life,
  is to live as variously as possible,
  to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred,
  climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day.
  Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding,
  and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours,
  life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length.
  It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery,
  but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

  Diane Ackerman

  Life, Beautiful, Country

  11 Copy quote

• Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else.

  Diane Ackerman

  Heart, Anxiety, Mind

  8 Copy quote

• Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

  Diane Ackerman

  Healing, Elements, Tables

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds”, p.27, Vintage

  31 Copy quote

• We are defined by how we place our attention.

  Diane Ackerman

  Attention, Defined

  8 Copy quote

• We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention

  Diane Ackerman

  Magic, Attention, World

  Diane Ackerman (2004). “An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• One of the keystones of romantic love - and also of the ecstatic religion practiced by mystics - is the powerful desire to become one with the beloved.

  Diane Ackerman

  Powerful, Romantic Love, Desire

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.95, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

  Diane Ackerman

  Life, Beautiful, Country

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of the Senses”, p.309, Vintage

  35 Copy quote

• There is a way of beholding nature which is a form of prayer, a way of minding something with such clarity and aliveness that the rest of the world recedes. It . . . gives the brain a small vacation.

  Diane Ackerman

  Inspirational, Prayer, Vacation

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir”, p.96, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire.

  Diane Ackerman

  Sex, Spring, Flower

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of the Senses”, p.13, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• American writer
  1803-1882
  Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.

  Diane Ackerman

  Play, Brain, Way

  19 Copy quote

• Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth.

  Diane Ackerman

  Stars, Thinking, Clouds

  Diane Ackerman, Dave Thurlow, C. Ralph Adler (1999). “Soul of the Sky: Exploring the Human Side of Weather”

  12 Copy quote

• Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.

  Diane Ackerman

  Love, School, Tuition

  Diane Ackerman (2014). “The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us”, p.122, W. W. Norton & Company

  12 Copy quote

• Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.

  Diane Ackerman

  Art, Light, Shadow

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of the Senses”, p.9, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

• Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else.

  Diane Ackerman

  Knees, Wonder, Ricochet

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems”, p.111, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

• The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves.

  Diane Ackerman

  Heart, Museums, Lifetime

  "A Natural History of Love". Book by Diane Ackerman, 1994.

  24 Copy quote

• I think if you look at any facet of nature in enough detail, you find it fascinating. How could you not? The universe is so full of marvels. Here's an example -- rain, the shape of rain. I was minding my own business, working on my book, looking out the window, and it was raining and I was noticing that the raindrops were falling in that classic round-looking way, and I thought, 'I wonder if raindrops really are round?' So I started researching it a little, and I discovered that raindrops change shape 300 times a second.

  Diane Ackerman

  Rain, Book, Fall

  "Understanding writers, down to the letter / How do authors think? Interviews get behind the words to the creative process" by Steve Weinberg, www.sfgate.com. September 11, 2005.

  11 Copy quote

• Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

  Diane Ackerman

  Memories, Smell, Vision

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of the Senses”, p.5, Vintage

  20 Copy quote

• When I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call "white" is a rainbow of colored rays packed into a small space. The prism sets them free. Love is the white light of emotion.

  Diane Ackerman

  Love Is, Space, Glasses

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.16, Vintage

  23 Copy quote

• We live on the leash of our senses. There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.

  Diane Ackerman

  Music, Silence, Listening

  22 Copy quote

• Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ...We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.

  Diane Ackerman

  Nature, Self, Irises

  Diane Ackerman (2002). “Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden”, G K Hall & Company

  53 Copy quote

• The well of nature is full today. Time to go outside and take a drink.

  Diane Ackerman

  Vices, Today, Drink

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Deep Play”, p.171, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Above all, we ask the poet to teach us a way of seeing.

  Diane Ackerman

  Way, Poet, Teach

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Deep Play”, p.127, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.

  Diane Ackerman

  Soul, Share, Our Lives

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir”, p.150, W. W. Norton & Company

  5 Copy quote

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