Nature Quotes by Annie Dillard

“The general rule in nature is that live things are soft within and rigid without.”

— Annie Dillard

No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.

— Annie Dillard

If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.

— Annie Dillard

if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.

— Annie Dillard

“I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was…

— Annie Dillard

I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard…

— Annie Dillard

Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.

— Annie Dillard

Does anything eat flowers. I couldn't recall having seen anything eat a flower - are they nature's privileged pets?

— Annie Dillard

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

“Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole…

— Annie Dillard

We are here to abet creation and to witness to it, to notice each other's beautiful face and complex nature so that…

— Annie Dillard

Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly…

— Annie Dillard

“If indeed [nature] has no greater aim than to provide a home for her greatest experiment, Man, it would be just like…

— Annie Dillard

Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we…

— Annie Dillard

“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

Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had…

— Annie Dillard

“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

Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a…

— Annie Dillard

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

“An infant is a pucker of the earth's thin skin; so are we. We arise like budding yeasts and break off: we…

— Annie Dillard

“In the great meteor shower of August, the Perseid, I wail all day for the shooting stars I miss. They’re out there…

— Annie Dillard

What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been…

— Annie Dillard

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

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

“The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and…

— Annie Dillard

You can, in short, lead the life of the mind, which is, despite some appalling frustrations, the happiest life on earth. And…

— Annie Dillard

“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

“I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt…

— Annie Dillard

“I am sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek. I am really here, alive on the intricate earth under trees. But under…

— Annie Dillard

“I saw to the south a man walking. He was breaking ground in perfect silence. He wore a harness and pulled a…

— Annie Dillard

“When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the…

— Annie Dillard

“Think of a globe, a revolving globe on a stand. Think of a contour globe, whose mountain ranges cast shadows, whose continents…

— Annie Dillard

“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

“At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now…

— Annie Dillard

“I chanced on a wonderful book by Marius von Senden, called Space and Sight. . . . For the newly sighted, vision…

— Annie Dillard

“Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was…

— Annie Dillard

“...beauty and grace [in nature] are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try…

— Annie Dillard

I never met a man who was shaken by a field of identical blades of grass. An acre of poppies and a…

— Annie Dillard

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

“Their song reminds me of a child’s neighborhood rallying cry—ee-ock-ee—with a heartfelt warble at the end. But it is their call that…

— Annie Dillard