If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Caring passionately about something isn't against nature, and it isn't against human nature. It's what we're here to do. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Does anything eat flowers. I couldn't recall having seen anything eat a flower - are they nature's privileged pets? — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“...beauty and grace [in nature] are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. I invite… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I never met a man who was shaken by a field of identical blades of grass. An acre of poppies and a… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block. The… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“If indeed [nature] has no greater aim than to provide a home for her greatest experiment, Man, it would be just like… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
There must be bands of enthusiasts for everything on earth-fanatics who shared a vocabulary, a batch of technical skills and equipment, and,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
As a thinker I keep discovering that beauty itself is as much a fact, and a mystery...I consider nature's facts -- its… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“You adapt yourself, Paul Klee said, to the contents of the paintbox. Adapting yourself to the contents of the paintbox, he said,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“As symbol, or as the structuring of symbols, art can render intelligible -- or at least visible, at least discussible -- those… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one’s mind. Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed.… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“These aren't still shots; the camera is always moving. And the scene is always just slipping out of sight, as if in… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Think of a globe, a revolving globe on a stand. Think of a contour globe, whose mountain ranges cast shadows, whose continents… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I am sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek. I am really here, alive on the intricate earth under trees. But under… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I saw to the south a man walking. He was breaking ground in perfect silence. He wore a harness and pulled a… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Say you could view a time lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Chloroplasts bear chlorophyll; they give the green world its color, and they carry out the business of photosynthesis. Around the inside perimeter… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Theirs is the mystery of continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, ‘Come down to the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent.” — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
We live in all we seek. The hidden shows up in too-plain sight. It lives captive on the face of the obvious - the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“...The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
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… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“What can we make of the inexpressible joy of children? It is a kind of gratitude, I think—the gratitude of the ten-year-old who wakes… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image