Diane Ackerman Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• Love is like a batik created from many emotional colors, it is a fabric whose pattern and brightness may vary.

  Diane Ackerman

  Love Is, Emotional, Color

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.17, Vintage

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

• 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

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• 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

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

  Diane Ackerman

  Light, Sky, Way

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• There was nothing to do but wait. It is always like this for naturalists, and for poets--the long hours of travel and preparation, and then the longer hours of waiting. All for that one electric, pulse-revving vision when the universe suddenly declares itself.

  Diane Ackerman

  Long, Waiting, Preparation

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Moon By Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats,Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales”, p.33, Vintage

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• It's essential to tailor rehab to what impassions someone. The brain gradually learns by riveting its attention-through endless repetitions.

  Diane Ackerman

  Brain, Essentials, Attention

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir”, p.239, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Life becomes a lot simpler for a creative person when he or she finds the routine that works best. ... get in the habit of going through the routine every day, and on some of those days, you're going to be lucky and have done some good work. ... Go to your study, close the door, invent your confidence.

  Diane Ackerman

  Doors, Creative, Routine

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• We're losing biodiversity globally at an alarming rate, and we need a cornucopia of different plants and animals, for the planet's health and our own.

  Diane Ackerman

  Animal, Different, Needs

  Diane Ackerman (2014). “The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us”, p.92, W. W. Norton & Company

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• 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, sunstruck hills every day.

  Diane Ackerman

  Curiosity, Life Is, Hills

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

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• Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature.

  Diane Ackerman

  People, Culture, Lost

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds”, p.52, Vintage

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• The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest.

  Diane Ackerman

  Sweet, Unrest, Logic

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems”, p.47, Vintage

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