What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch--with an electric hiss and cry--this speckled mineral sphere, our present world.
Annie DillardRead
We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing and appreciating the beauty and power in our surroundings and within each other.
Annie Dillard's quote invites us to become aware of the beauty and strength that exists in the world and among the people in our lives. It encourages a conscious appreciation for our environment and relationships, suggesting that our purpose includes acknowledging and praising the positive aspects of our existence.
Themes
BeautyPowerConsciousnessAppreciationPraise
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a motivational speech to encourage mindfulness.
More from Annie Dillard
All quotes βGeography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science; it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.
Annie DillardRead
Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.
Annie DillardRead
Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
Annie DillardRead
It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.
Annie DillardRead
To crank myself up I stood on a jack and ran myself up. I tightened myself like a bolt. I inserted myself in a vise-clamp and wound the handle till the pressure built. I drank coffee in titrated doses. It was a tricky business, requiring the finely tuned judgment of a skilled anesthesiologist. There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.
Annie DillardRead
Similar quotes
The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the sage steers by.
ZhuangziRead
Many do not recognize the fact as they ought, that Satan has got men fast asleep in sin and that it is his great device to keep them so. He does not care what we do if he can do that. We may sing songs about the sweet by and by, preach sermons and say prayers until doomsday, and he will never concern himself about us, if we don't wake anybody up. But if we awake the sleeping sinner he will gnash on us with his teeth. This is our work - to wake people up.
Catherine BoothRead
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
Zadie SmithRead
We know our lands have now become more valuable. The white people think we do not know their value; but we know that the land is everlasting, and the few goods we receive for it are soon worn out and gone.
CanasategoRead
While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.
John B. S. HaldaneRead
BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose BierceRead