Diane Ackerman Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• I like handling newborn animals. Fallen into life from an unmappable world, they are the ultimate immigrants, full of wonder and confusion.

  Diane Ackerman

  Animal, Confusion, World

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Moon By Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats,Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales”, p.184, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• It's so acceptably easy for a woman not to strive too hard, not to be too adventure-crazed, not to take too many risks, not to enjoy sex with full candor ... It isn't seemly for a woman to have that much zest.

  Diane Ackerman

  Sex, Adventure, Zest

  4 Copy quote

• Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.

  Diane Ackerman

  Past, Poetry, Telescopes

  Diane Ackerman (1999). “Deep Play”, Random House Incorporated

  7 Copy quote

• What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to death.

  Diane Ackerman

  Self, Birth, Odd

  Diane Ackerman (2004). “An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet; we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations.

  Diane Ackerman

  Sweet, Heart, Love Life

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of the Senses”, p.172, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• As a species, we've somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we'll survive our own ingenuity.

  Diane Ackerman

  War, Ice, Age

  Diane Ackerman (2014). “The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us”, p.136, W. W. Norton & Company

  10 Copy quote

• Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

  Diane Ackerman

  Mirrors, Knowing Who You Are, Keeping Secrets

  "A Natural History of the Senses". Book by Diane Ackerman, 1991.

  72 Copy quote

• Things that live by night live outside the realm of 'normal' time and so suggest living outside the realm of good and evil, since we have moralistic feelings about time. Chauvinistic about our human need to wake by day and sleep by night, we come to associate night dwellers with people up to no good at a time when they have the jump on the rest of us and are defying nature, defying their circadian rhythms.

  Diane Ackerman

  Sleep, Night, People

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Moon By Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats,Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales”, p.40, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• I'm certainly not opposed to digital technology, whose graces I daily enjoy and rely on in so many ways. But I worry about our virtual blinders.

  Diane Ackerman

  Technology, Worry, Grace

  "Are We Living in Sensory Overload or Sensory Poverty?". opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. June 10, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.

  Diane Ackerman

  Knowing, Mind, Wrecks

  7 Copy quote

• Horses have made civilization possible.

  Diane Ackerman

  Horse, Civilization, Made

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Deep Play”, p.35, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Love is the white light of emotion.

  Diane Ackerman

  Love, Light, White

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

  4 Copy quote

• Shaped a little like a loaf of French country bread, our brain is a crowded chemistry lab, bustling with nonstop neural conversations.

  Diane Ackerman

  Country, Brain, Neurons

  Diane Ackerman (2004). “An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature's precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human nature.

  Diane Ackerman

  Distance, Balance, Human Nature

  4 Copy quote

• A self is a frightening thing to waste, it's the lens through which one's whole life is viewed, and few people are willing to part with it, in death, or even imaginatively, in art.

  Diane Ackerman

  Art, Self, People

  Diane Ackerman (2004). “An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain”, p.225, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• I try to give myself passionately, totally, to whatever I'm observing, with as much affectionate curiosity as I can muster, as a means of understanding a little better what being human is.

  Diane Ackerman

  Passion, Mean, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• We humans are obsessed with lights...Perhaps it is our way of hurling the constellations back at the sky.

  Diane Ackerman

  Light, Sky, Way

  4 Copy quote

• Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world. ... they bring the world into focus, they corral ideas, they hone thoughts, they paint watercolors of perception.

  Diane Ackerman

  Ideas, Focus, Perception

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

  5 Copy quote

• Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or die, and yet we're reluctant to linger over its names. Without a supple vocabulary, we can't even talk or think about it directly.

  Diane Ackerman

  Passion, Fighting, Love Is

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.19, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• Shaped a little like a loaf of French country bread, our brain is a crowded chemistry lab, bustling with nonstop neural conversations.Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag.

  Diane Ackerman

  Country, Dream, Clothes

  8 Copy quote

• If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again.

  Diane Ackerman

  Children, Heaven, Age

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Deep Play”, p.20, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.

  Diane Ackerman

  Life, Dream, Crazy

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir”, p.90, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• We have vexed and bothered every plant and every animal on every continent.

  Diane Ackerman

  Animal, Evolution, Plant

  4 Copy quote

• Because we can't escape our ancient hunger to live close to nature, we encircle the house with lawns and gardens, install picture windows, adopt pets and Boston ferns, and scent everything that touches our lives.

  Diane Ackerman

  Garden, Boston, House

  Diane Ackerman (2014). “The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us”, p.62, W. W. Norton & Company

  19 Copy quote

• Adventure is not something you travel to find. It's something you take with you, or you're not going to find it when you arrive.

  Diane Ackerman

  Travel, Adventure

  4 Copy quote

Page 5 of 8

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin