Search quotes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
1500199	This hospital, like every other, is a hole in the universe through which holiness issues in blasts. It blows both ways, in and out of time.		Annie Dillard
d8ff4b0	Many fine people were out there living, people whose consciences permitted them to sleep at night despite their not having written a decent sentence that day, or ever.		Annie Dillard (Author)
e8cf66d	What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.	science whale space	Annie Dillard
1c77801	For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. ..	selfconsciousness awakening consciousness	Annie Dillard
2bd7f22	Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block. The Chiense say that we live in the world of ten thousand things. Each of the ten thousand things cries out to us precisely nothing.	nature listening	Annie Dillard
dd8b2b1	The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: 'This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is (21).	nature world philosophy sight	Annie Dillard
046dc8d	The interior life is often stupid. Its egoism blinds it and deafens it; its imagination spins out ignorant tales, fascinated. It fancies that the western wind blows on the Self, and leaves fall at the feet of the Self for a reason, and people are watching. A mind risks real ignorance for the sometimes paltry prize of an imagination enriched. The trick of reason is to get the imagination to seize the actual world--if only from time to time.	imagination interior-life self	Annie Dillard
d0b8cbb	What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. I wanted strength, not tea parties. What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you c..		annie dillard
06ed679	At it's best,the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then - and only then - it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way.	writing-process	Annie Dillard (Author)
f2a033b	How loose he seemed to himself, under the stars! The spaces between the stars were pores, out of which human meaning evaporated.		Annie Dillard
710df0e	One of the few things I know about writing is this:spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend it now. Something more will arise later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.	writing-life on-writing-a-book on-writing	Annie Dillard
e273dc2	At night on land migrating monarchs slumber on certain trees, hung in festoons with wings folded together, thick on the trees and shaggy as bearskin. [p. 244]		Annie Dillard
e737cb1	I smelled silt on the wind, turkey, laundry, leaves . . . my God what a world. There is no accounting for one second of it (267).	universe wonder page	Annie Dillard
5d1030a	A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life--the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives--as an actual project under way, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them. I breathed the a..	history childhood memory	Annie Dillard
9196720	If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe....No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.		Annie Dillard
0843336	That something is everywhere and always amiss is part of the very stuff of creation. It is as though each clay form had baked into it, a blue streak of nonbeing, a shaded emptiness like a bubble that not only shapes its very structure but that also causes it to list and ultimately explode. We could have planned things more mercifully, perhaps, but our plan would never get off the drawing board until we agreed to the very comprising terms th..		Annie Dillard
cccfd43	This light-shouldered boy could jitterbug, old style, and would; he was more precious than gold, yea, than much fine gold. We jitterbugged...Only the strenth in our fingertips kept us alive. If they weakened or slipped, his fingertips or mine, we'd fall spinning backward across the length of the room and out through the glass French doors to the snowy terrace, and if we were any good we'd make sure we fell on the downbeat, snow or no snow.		Annie Dillard
aee63d2	As a child I read hoping to learn everything, so I could be like my father. I hoped to combine my father's grasp of information and reasoning with my mother's will and vitality. But the books were leading me away. They would propel me right out of Pittsburgh altogether, so I could fashion a life among books somewhere else. So the Midwest nourishes us . . . and presents us with the spectacle of a land and a people completed and certain. And ..		Annie Dillard
46eddf0	If the sore spot is not fatal, if it does not grow and block something, you can use its power for many years, until the heart resorbs it.		Annie Dillard
de93f3e	Under her high brows, she eyed him straight on and straight across. She had gone to girls' schools, he recalled later. Those girls looked straight at you.	women	Annie Dillard
9b573e9	The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters. "Last forever!" Who hasn't prayed that..	fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation	Annie Dillard
7879b53	I want to think about trees. Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can't think about them. I live with trees. There are creatures under our feet, creatures that live over our heads, but trees live quite convincingly in the same filament of air we inhabit, and in addition, they extend impressively in both directi..	fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching trees growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation	Annie Dillard
349ac93	Self-consciousness, however, does hinder the experience of the present. It is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest. So long as I lose myself in a tree, say, I can scent its leafy breath or estimate its board feet of lumber, I can draw its fruits or boil tea on its branches, and the tree stays tree. But the second I become aware of myself at any of these activities -- looking over my own shoulder, as it were -- the tree vanishes, upr..		Annie Dillard
f1f3c26	In the forty minutes I watched the muskrat, he never saw me, smelled me, or heard me at all. When he was in full view of course I never moved except to breathe. My eyes would move, too, following his, but he never noticed. Only once, when he was feeding from the opposite bank about eight feet away did he suddenly rise upright, all alert- and then he immediately resumed foraging. But he never knew I was there. I never knew I was there, eit..	fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy ring-the-bells enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation	Annie Dillard
a74238d	One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief.		Annie Dillard
50146e0	Experiencing the present purely is being emptied and hollow; you catch the grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.		Annie Dillard
10fd338	I had a head for religious ideas. They were the first ideas I ever encountered. They made other ideas seem mean....I had miles of Bible in memory: some perforce, but most by hap, like the words to songs. There was no corner of my brain where you couldn't find, among the files of clothing labels and heaps of rocks, among the swarms of protozoans and shelves of novels, whole tapes and snarls and reels of Bible.	religion ideas memoir memory	Annie Dillard
6ca2be2	The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet.	writing-life spirituality	Annie Dillard
e092273	The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity.	writing-life sensitivity discipline	Annie Dillard
0f713ad	So live. I'll be the nun for you. I am now.	philosophy	Annie Dillard
cfa6097	I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed.		Annie Dillard
28529d9	I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. I take a deep breath, I open my eyes. Looking, I see there are worms in the horns of the altar like live maggots in amber, there are shells of worms in the rock and moths flapping at my eyes. A wind from no place rises. A sense of the real exults me; the cords loosen: I walk on my way.	life purpose	Annie Dillard
67c56e3	It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting. The woods are acres of sticks: I could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. When the leaves fall, the striptease is over; things stand mute and reveale..	winter reading writing spirit wonder philosophy philosopher-s-stone walking soul	Annie Dillard
af90b4d	Process is nothing; erase your tracks. The path is not the work. I hope your tracks have grown over; I hope birds ate the crumbs; I hope you will toss it all and not look back.	writing-process	Annie Dillard
acf4b5c	Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?		Annie Dillard
869f7b2	The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.		Annie Dillard
7897dae	When I was fifteen, I felt it coming; now I was sixteen, and it hit. My feet had imperceptibly been set on a new path...there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it, or about anything. I was going to hell on a handcart, that was all, and I knew it and everyone around me knew it, and there it was.		Annie Dillard
694249e	The creator is not puritan. A creature need not work for a living; creatures may simply steal and suck and be blessed for all that with a share--an enormous share--of the sunlight and air.		Annie Dillard
900bb3a	And under the cicadas, deeper down that the longest taproot, between and beneath the rounded black rocks and slanting slabs of sandstone in the earth, ground water is creeping. Ground water seeps and slides, across and down, across and down, leaking from here to there, minutely at a rate of a mile a year. What a tug of waters goes on! There are flings and pulls in every direction at every moment. The world is a wild wrestle under the grass;..	fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation	Annie Dillard
af6e6af	The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.		Annie Dillard
eb9e0b7	No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. If the mockingbird were chirping to give us the long-sought formula for a unified field theory, the point would be only slightly less irrelevant. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?		Annie Dillard
6cc1d2d	The thousands of wealth have fallen with wonders, said Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov. Do you find this unclear? It certainly sounds like the sort of thing thousands of wealth do. They fall. Does anyone know what the rabbi meant by wonders?		Annie Dillard
c246e89	There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading--that is a good life.		Annie Dillard
7fedebf	In Pliny I read about the invention of clay modeling. A Sicyonian potter came to Corinth. There his daughter fell in love with a young man who had to make frequent long journeys away from the city. When he sat with her at home, she used to trace the outline of his shadow that a candle's light cast on the wall. Then, in his absence she worked over the profile, deepening, so that she might enjoy his face, and remember. One day the father slap..	myth story folk-tale fairy-tale shadow muslim tale legend	Annie Dillard

1500199

This hospital, like every other, is a hole in the universe through which holiness issues in blasts. It blows both ways, in and out of time.

Annie Dillard

d8ff4b0

Many fine people were out there living, people whose consciences permitted them to sleep at night despite their not having written a decent sentence that day, or ever.

Annie Dillard (Author)

e8cf66d

What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.

science whale space

Annie Dillard

1c77801

For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. ..

selfconsciousness awakening consciousness

Annie Dillard

2bd7f22

Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block. The Chiense say that we live in the world of ten thousand things. Each of the ten thousand things cries out to us precisely nothing.

nature listening

Annie Dillard

dd8b2b1

The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: 'This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is (21).

nature world philosophy sight

Annie Dillard

046dc8d

The interior life is often stupid. Its egoism blinds it and deafens it; its imagination spins out ignorant tales, fascinated. It fancies that the western wind blows on the Self, and leaves fall at the feet of the Self for a reason, and people are watching. A mind risks real ignorance for the sometimes paltry prize of an imagination enriched. The trick of reason is to get the imagination to seize the actual world--if only from time to time.

imagination interior-life self

Annie Dillard

d0b8cbb

What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. I wanted strength, not tea parties. What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you c..

annie dillard

06ed679

At it's best,the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then - and only then - it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way.

writing-process

Annie Dillard (Author)

f2a033b

How loose he seemed to himself, under the stars! The spaces between the stars were pores, out of which human meaning evaporated.

Annie Dillard

710df0e

One of the few things I know about writing is this:spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend it now. Something more will arise later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.

writing-life on-writing-a-book on-writing

Annie Dillard

e273dc2

At night on land migrating monarchs slumber on certain trees, hung in festoons with wings folded together, thick on the trees and shaggy as bearskin. [p. 244]

Annie Dillard

e737cb1

I smelled silt on the wind, turkey, laundry, leaves . . . my God what a world. There is no accounting for one second of it (267).

universe wonder page

Annie Dillard

5d1030a

A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life--the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives--as an actual project under way, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them. I breathed the a..

history childhood memory

Annie Dillard

9196720

If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe....No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.

Annie Dillard

0843336

That something is everywhere and always amiss is part of the very stuff of creation. It is as though each clay form had baked into it, a blue streak of nonbeing, a shaded emptiness like a bubble that not only shapes its very structure but that also causes it to list and ultimately explode. We could have planned things more mercifully, perhaps, but our plan would never get off the drawing board until we agreed to the very comprising terms th..

Annie Dillard

cccfd43

This light-shouldered boy could jitterbug, old style, and would; he was more precious than gold, yea, than much fine gold. We jitterbugged...Only the strenth in our fingertips kept us alive. If they weakened or slipped, his fingertips or mine, we'd fall spinning backward across the length of the room and out through the glass French doors to the snowy terrace, and if we were any good we'd make sure we fell on the downbeat, snow or no snow.

Annie Dillard

aee63d2

As a child I read hoping to learn everything, so I could be like my father. I hoped to combine my father's grasp of information and reasoning with my mother's will and vitality. But the books were leading me away. They would propel me right out of Pittsburgh altogether, so I could fashion a life among books somewhere else. So the Midwest nourishes us . . . and presents us with the spectacle of a land and a people completed and certain. And ..

Annie Dillard

46eddf0

If the sore spot is not fatal, if it does not grow and block something, you can use its power for many years, until the heart resorbs it.

Annie Dillard

de93f3e

Under her high brows, she eyed him straight on and straight across. She had gone to girls' schools, he recalled later. Those girls looked straight at you.

women

Annie Dillard

9b573e9

The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters. "Last forever!" Who hasn't prayed that..

fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation

Annie Dillard

7879b53

I want to think about trees. Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can't think about them. I live with trees. There are creatures under our feet, creatures that live over our heads, but trees live quite convincingly in the same filament of air we inhabit, and in addition, they extend impressively in both directi..

fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching trees growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation

Annie Dillard

349ac93

Self-consciousness, however, does hinder the experience of the present. It is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest. So long as I lose myself in a tree, say, I can scent its leafy breath or estimate its board feet of lumber, I can draw its fruits or boil tea on its branches, and the tree stays tree. But the second I become aware of myself at any of these activities -- looking over my own shoulder, as it were -- the tree vanishes, upr..

Annie Dillard

f1f3c26

In the forty minutes I watched the muskrat, he never saw me, smelled me, or heard me at all. When he was in full view of course I never moved except to breathe. My eyes would move, too, following his, but he never noticed. Only once, when he was feeding from the opposite bank about eight feet away did he suddenly rise upright, all alert- and then he immediately resumed foraging. But he never knew I was there. I never knew I was there, eit..

fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy ring-the-bells enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation

Annie Dillard

a74238d

One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief.

Annie Dillard

50146e0

Experiencing the present purely is being emptied and hollow; you catch the grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.

Annie Dillard

10fd338

I had a head for religious ideas. They were the first ideas I ever encountered. They made other ideas seem mean....I had miles of Bible in memory: some perforce, but most by hap, like the words to songs. There was no corner of my brain where you couldn't find, among the files of clothing labels and heaps of rocks, among the swarms of protozoans and shelves of novels, whole tapes and snarls and reels of Bible.

religion ideas memoir memory

Annie Dillard

6ca2be2

The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet.

writing-life spirituality

Annie Dillard

e092273

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity.

writing-life sensitivity discipline

Annie Dillard

0f713ad

So live. I'll be the nun for you. I am now.

philosophy

Annie Dillard

cfa6097

I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed.

Annie Dillard

28529d9

I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. I take a deep breath, I open my eyes. Looking, I see there are worms in the horns of the altar like live maggots in amber, there are shells of worms in the rock and moths flapping at my eyes. A wind from no place rises. A sense of the real exults me; the cords loosen: I walk on my way.

life purpose

Annie Dillard

67c56e3

It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting. The woods are acres of sticks: I could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. When the leaves fall, the striptease is over; things stand mute and reveale..

winter reading writing spirit wonder philosophy philosopher-s-stone walking soul

Annie Dillard

af90b4d

Process is nothing; erase your tracks. The path is not the work. I hope your tracks have grown over; I hope birds ate the crumbs; I hope you will toss it all and not look back.

writing-process

Annie Dillard

acf4b5c

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?

Annie Dillard

869f7b2

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Annie Dillard

7897dae

When I was fifteen, I felt it coming; now I was sixteen, and it hit. My feet had imperceptibly been set on a new path...there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it, or about anything. I was going to hell on a handcart, that was all, and I knew it and everyone around me knew it, and there it was.

Annie Dillard

694249e

The creator is not puritan. A creature need not work for a living; creatures may simply steal and suck and be blessed for all that with a share--an enormous share--of the sunlight and air.

Annie Dillard

900bb3a

And under the cicadas, deeper down that the longest taproot, between and beneath the rounded black rocks and slanting slabs of sandstone in the earth, ground water is creeping. Ground water seeps and slides, across and down, across and down, leaking from here to there, minutely at a rate of a mile a year. What a tug of waters goes on! There are flings and pulls in every direction at every moment. The world is a wild wrestle under the grass;..

fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation

Annie Dillard

af6e6af

The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.

Annie Dillard

eb9e0b7

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. If the mockingbird were chirping to give us the long-sought formula for a unified field theory, the point would be only slightly less irrelevant. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

Annie Dillard

6cc1d2d

The thousands of wealth have fallen with wonders, said Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov. Do you find this unclear? It certainly sounds like the sort of thing thousands of wealth do. They fall. Does anyone know what the rabbi meant by wonders?

Annie Dillard

c246e89

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading--that is a good life.

Annie Dillard

7fedebf

In Pliny I read about the invention of clay modeling. A Sicyonian potter came to Corinth. There his daughter fell in love with a young man who had to make frequent long journeys away from the city. When he sat with her at home, she used to trace the outline of his shadow that a candle's light cast on the wall. Then, in his absence she worked over the profile, deepening, so that she might enjoy his face, and remember. One day the father slap..

myth story folk-tale fairy-tale shadow muslim tale legend

Annie Dillard