Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
Diane AckermanRead
The garden is a living, pulsing, singing, scratching, warring, erotic, and generally rowdy thing. I may find peace in its midst, but I regard it as a whole with many parts, a plural organism.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the dynamic and vibrant nature of a garden as a reflection of life itself.
Diane Ackerman's quote captures the essence of a garden as more than just a tranquil space; it is a thriving ecosystem full of diverse life and activity. The use of vivid descriptors like 'pulsing' and 'singing' illustrates that a garden is alive with various interactions, representing the complexity of nature. Even amidst this chaos, one can find peace, highlighting a deep connection between humans and the natural world.
In practice
During a speech on environmental conservation, one might use this quote to highlight the vitality of nature.
Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature - not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we're inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes inside, or some dust.
We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can't completely satisfy that yearning.
Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.
American writer_x000D_ _x000D_ 1803-1882_x000D_ _x000D_ Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.
In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.
If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.
Pines a thousand years old. Every year they must go farther for them: they recede, like beavers and Indians, before the white man.
From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
Exultation is the going Of an inland soul to sea Past the houses, past the headlands Into deep eternity! Bred as we, among the mountains Can the sailor understand The divine intoxication Of the first league out from land?
The time has come to link ecology to economic and human development. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. What is happening to the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil will affect us all.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
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