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

• For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones.

  Diane Ackerman

  Zoos, Animal, Sea

  45 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

• We are defined by how we place our attention.

  Diane Ackerman

  Attention, Defined

  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

• 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

• 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

• Ecstasy is what everyone craves - not love or sex, but a hot-blooded, soaring intensity, in which being alive is a joy and a thrill. That enravishment doesn't give meaning to life, and yet without it life seems meaningless.

  Diane Ackerman

  Inspirational, Sex, Giving

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.119, Vintage

  4 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

• 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

• Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.

  Diane Ackerman

  Space, Needs, Phantoms

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir”, p.180, W. W. Norton & Company

  6 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

• 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

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

  Diane Ackerman

  Play, Brain, Way

  19 Copy quote

• Happiness doesn't require laughter, only well-being and a sense that the world is breaking someone else's heart, not mine.

  Diane Ackerman

  Happiness, Laughter, Heart

  4 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

• 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

• 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

• Poetry reminds us of the truths about life and human nature that we knew all along, but forgot somehow because they weren't yet in memorable language.

  Diane Ackerman

  Memorable, Poetry, Language

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Deep Play”, p.129, Vintage

  7 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

• Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

  Diane Ackerman

  Love, Summer, Beach

  "A Natural History of the Senses". Book by Diane Ackerman, 1990.

  12 Copy quote

• Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn't fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive.

  Diane Ackerman

  Nature, Fun, Joy

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds”, p.20, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touched starved. Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.

  Diane Ackerman

  People, Touching, Age

  9 Copy quote

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