Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. A
  4. Annie Dillard
  5. Nature

Annie Dillard Quotes about Nature

All Annie Dillard Quotes Accidents Age Art Atheism Awareness Chaos Children Common Sense Consciousness Creation Dying Earth Feelings Finding Yourself Giving Grace Heart Home House Imagination Inspirational Inspiring Journey Joy Judging Life Literature Lying Memories Morning Mountain Nature quotes Pain Past Prayer Progress Quitting Reading Religion Running Silence Skins Sleep Soul Summer Survivor Time Vision Water Winter Work Writing
The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'tbut that it all flows so

The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'tbut that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.

Annie Dillard
Beautiful, Nature, Freedom

Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. ... No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.

Annie Dillard
Nature, Believe, Judging

Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once.

Annie Dillard
Nature, Believe, Autumn
Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.66, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. I invite you to go sit under that tree by your street.

Annie Dillard
Nature, Tree, Enlightenment

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

Annie Dillard
Nature, Flower, Pet

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 much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves.

Annie Dillard
Nature, Eye, Water
Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.18, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

You May Also Like: