110+ Diane Ackerman Quotes On Education, Order And Name Of Daybreak

Diane Ackerman was an American poet, essayist, and naturalist. She wrote about topics ranging from nature to philosophy and won numerous awards for her work. Her most famous works include The Zookeeper's Wife and A Natural History of the Senses. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Diane Ackerman on love, life, education.

Top 10 Diane Ackerman Quotes

1. I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
2. Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.
3. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
4. I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.
5. No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.
6. Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.
7. Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.
8. Fear is danger to your body, but disgust is danger to your soul.
9. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.
10. American writer 1803-1882 Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.

Diane Ackerman Short Quotes

• Give a man enough rope and he'll wrap himself around your little finger.
• Variety is the pledge that matter makes to living things.
• There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
• Violets smell like burnt sugar cubes that have been dipped in lemon and velvet.
• The visual image is a kind of tripwire for the emotions.
• As fleeting emotions stalk it, a face can leak fear or the guilt of a forming lie.
• For if I do something, I never do it thoughtlessly.
• We are defined by how we place our attention.
• I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings.
• Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.

Diane Ackerman Quotes About Love

When I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call "white" is a rainbow of colored rays packed into a small space. The prism sets them free. Love is the white light of emotion. — Diane Ackerman

The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sunstruck hills every day. — Diane Ackerman

habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot. — Diane Ackerman

People search for love as if it were a city lost beneath the desert dunes, where pleasure is the law, the streets are lined with brocade cushions, and the sun never sets. — Diane Ackerman

... love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny. — Diane Ackerman

Love is like a batik created from many emotional colors, it is a fabric whose pattern and brightness may vary. — Diane Ackerman

One of the keystones of romantic love - and also of the ecstatic religion practiced by mystics - is the powerful desire to become one with the beloved. — Diane Ackerman

Ecstasy is what everyone craves - not love or sex, but a hot-blooded, soaring intensity, in which being alive is a joy and a thrill. That enravishment doesn't give meaning to life, and yet without it life seems meaningless. — Diane Ackerman

The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves. — Diane Ackerman

Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or die, and yet we're reluctant to linger over its names. Without a supple vocabulary, we can't even talk or think about it directly. — Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman Quotes About Life

Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well. — Diane Ackerman

One can live at a low flame. Most people do. For some, life is an exercise in moderation (best china saved for special occasions), but given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too deeply? — Diane Ackerman

Poetry reminds us of the truths about life and human nature that we knew all along, but forgot somehow because they weren't yet in memorable language. — Diane Ackerman

I like handling newborn animals. Fallen into life from an unmappable world, they are the ultimate immigrants, full of wonder and confusion. — Diane Ackerman

Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way. — Diane Ackerman

For me, life offers so many complexly appealing moments that two beautiful objects may be equally beautiful for different reasons and at different times. How can one choose? — Diane Ackerman

I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. — Diane Ackerman

Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet. — Diane Ackerman

Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite — Diane Ackerman

Nothing reveals more about the inner life of a people than their arts. — Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman Quotes About Senses

There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses. — Diane Ackerman

We live on the leash of our senses. — Diane Ackerman

Smell is the mute sense, the one without words. — Diane Ackerman

Our sense of safety depends on predictability, so anything living outside the usual rules we suspect to be an outlaw, a ghoul. — Diane Ackerman

The senses don't just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern. — Diane Ackerman

Happiness doesn't require laughter, only well-being and a sense that the world is breaking someone else's heart, not mine. — Diane Ackerman

To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit. — Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman Quotes About Creative

Though we marry as adults, we don't marry adults. We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative. — Diane Ackerman

For the longest time I didn't realize I was creative - I just thought I was strange. — Diane Ackerman

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. — Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman Quotes About Nature

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. — Diane Ackerman

We tend to think of heroes only in terms of violent combat, whether it's against enemies or a natural disaster. But human beings also perform radical acts of compassion; we just don't talk about them, or we don't talk about them as much. — Diane Ackerman

Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature. — Diane Ackerman

The well of nature is full today. Time to go outside and take a drink. — Diane Ackerman

Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn't fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive. — Diane Ackerman

We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling. — Diane Ackerman

Our relationship with nature has changed radically, irreversibly, but by no means all for the bad. Our new epoch is laced with invention. Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable. — Diane Ackerman

There is a way of beholding nature which is a form of prayer, a way of minding something with such clarity and aliveness that the rest of the world recedes. It . . . gives the brain a small vacation. — Diane Ackerman

Nature neither gives nor expects mercy. — Diane Ackerman

Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ...We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves. — Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman Famous Quotes And Sayings

If a mind is just a few pounds of blood, urea, and electricity, how does it manage to contemplate itself, worry about its soul, do time-and-motion studies, admire the shy hooves of a goat, know that it will die, enjoy all the grand and lesser mayhems of the heart ? — Diane Ackerman

I am a great fan of the universe, which I take literally: as one. All of it interests me, and it interests me in detail. — Diane Ackerman

Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. — Diane Ackerman

[On gardens:] I think they're sanctuaries for the mind and spirit. ... It's easy to feel wonder-struck in a garden, especially if you cultivate delight. — Diane Ackerman

Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits. In time, a pair invents its own commonwealth, complete with anthems, rituals, and lingos-a cult of two with fallible gods. — Diane Ackerman

Not much is known about alligators. They don't train well. And they're unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories. — Diane Ackerman

We would lie on coral sand, below sugary stars, watching Cassiopeia mount her throne and the Great Bear wash its paws in the South. I would say, "I have a secret to tell you." And, folding me in your arms, boyish and sly, you would answer: "Whisper it into my mouth. — Diane Ackerman

An animal on a leash is not tamed by the owner. The owner is extending himself through the leash to that part of his personality which is pure dog, that part of him which just wants to eat, sleep, bark, hump chairs, wet the floor in joy, and drink out of a toilet bowl. — Diane Ackerman

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret. You are looking into a predator's eyes. Most predators have eyes set right on the front of their heads, so they can use binocular vision to sight and track their prey. — Diane Ackerman

I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity. — Diane Ackerman

In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touched starved. Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight. — Diane Ackerman

Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else. — Diane Ackerman

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically. — Diane Ackerman

When I go biking, I am mentally far far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart. — Diane Ackerman

Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur. — Diane Ackerman

The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity. — Diane Ackerman

If we mammals don't get something to eat every day or two, our temperature drops, all our signs fall off, and we begin to starve. Living at biological red alert, it's not surprising how obsessed we are with food; I'm just amazed we don't pace and fret about it all the time. — Diane Ackerman

In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet; we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations. — Diane Ackerman

It's essential to tailor rehab to what impassions someone. The brain gradually learns by riveting its attention-through endless repetitions. — Diane Ackerman

Because poets feel what we're afraid to feel, venture where we're reluctant to go, we learn from their journeys without taking the same dramatic risks. — Diane Ackerman

In Manhattan last month I heard a woman borrowing the jargon of junkies to say to another, 'Want to do some chocolate?' — Diane Ackerman

...for most people in the [Jewish] Ghetto [of Warsaw] nature lived only in memory -- no parks, birds, or greenery existed in the Ghetto -- and they suffered the loss of nature like a phantom-limb pain, an amputation that scrambled the body's rhythms, starved the senses, and made basic ideas about the world impossible for children to fathom. — Diane Ackerman

If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again. — Diane Ackerman

The only and absolute perfect union of two is when a baby hangs suspended in its mother's womb, like a tiny madman in a padded cell, attached to her, feeling her blood and hormones, and moods play through its body, feeling her feelings. — Diane Ackerman

Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again. — Diane Ackerman

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. — Diane Ackerman

When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart. — Diane Ackerman

There's no place you can go on the prairie that you don't hear the white noise of the wind, steady and rough as surf curling along a non-existant shore. — Diane Ackerman

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth. — Diane Ackerman

Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else. — Diane Ackerman

What is erotic? The acrobatic play of the imagination. The sea of memories in which we bathe. The way we caress and worship things with our eyes. Our willingness to be stirred by the sight of the voluptuous. What is erotic is our passion for the liveliness of life. — Diane Ackerman

We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention — Diane Ackerman

There was nothing to do but wait. It is always like this for naturalists, and for poets--the long hours of travel and preparation, and then the longer hours of waiting. All for that one electric, pulse-revving vision when the universe suddenly declares itself. — Diane Ackerman

Devising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most people invent euphemisms. Those who refer to plants by Latin name are considered more expert, if a little pedantic. — Diane Ackerman

Choice is a signature of our species. — Diane Ackerman

History is an agreed-upon fiction. — Diane Ackerman

I believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive. — Diane Ackerman

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world. ... they bring the world into focus, they corral ideas, they hone thoughts, they paint watercolors of perception. — Diane Ackerman

We have vexed and bothered every plant and every animal on every continent. — Diane Ackerman

Writer's block is a luxury most people with deadlines don't have. — Diane Ackerman

Like love, travel makes you innocent again. — Diane Ackerman

A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire. — Diane Ackerman

poetry had everything to teach me about life. — Diane Ackerman

Writing is my form of celebration and prayer. — Diane Ackerman

So before I start work on a book, I'm like a pregnant mole - I obsessively tidy and order my closets and everything in my study. Because there's such a cascade of images and ideas that I'm grapping with mentally, I couldn't also be in a chaotic setting. — Diane Ackerman

There is that unique moment when one confronts something new and astonishment begins. — Diane Ackerman

Things that live by night live outside the realm of 'normal' time and so suggest living outside the realm of good and evil, since we have moralistic feelings about time. Chauvinistic about our human need to wake by day and sleep by night, we come to associate night dwellers with people up to no good at a time when they have the jump on the rest of us and are defying nature, defying their circadian rhythms. — Diane Ackerman

I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory — Diane Ackerman

Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move. — Diane Ackerman

Love is the white light of emotion. — Diane Ackerman

The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven's sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's jazz. Audrey Hepburn's wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children. — Diane Ackerman

In the early years of the Uprising, we survived on one meal a day of horse meat and soup, but by the end we ate only dried peas, dogs, cats and birds. — Diane Ackerman

Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source? — Diane Ackerman

When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. — Diane Ackerman

I try to give myself passionately, totally, to whatever I'm observing, with as much affectionate curiosity as I can muster, as a means of understanding a little better what being human is. — Diane Ackerman

A life like an intricately woven basket, frayed, worn, broken, unraveled, reworked, reknit from many of its original pieces... Life can survive in the constant shadow of illness, and even rise to moments of rampant joy, but the shadow remains, and one has to make space for it. — Diane Ackerman

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world. — Diane Ackerman

Though most of us don't hunt, our eyes are still the great monopolists of our senses. To taste or touch your enemy or your food, you have to be unnervingly close to it. To smell or hear it, you can risk being further off. But vision can rush through the fields and up the mountains, travel across time, country, and parsecs of outer space, and collect bushel baskets of information as it goes. Animals that hear high frequencies better than we do — Diane Ackerman

Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another. — Diane Ackerman

Our skin is what stands between us and the world. — Diane Ackerman

Disassociating, mindfulness, transcendence-whatever the label-it's a sort of loophole in our contract with reality, a form of self-rescue. — Diane Ackerman

Humans are the most successful invasives of all time. — Diane Ackerman

The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest. — Diane Ackerman

What would dawn have been like, had you awakened? It would have sung through your bones. All I can do this morning is let it sing through mine. — Diane Ackerman

As anyone who has received or dispensed psychotherapy knows, it's a profession whose mainspring is love. Nearly everyone who visits a therapist has a love disorder of one sort or another, and each has a story to tell - of love lost or denied, love twisted or betrayed, love perverted or shackled to violence. Broken attachments litter the office floors like pick-up sticks. People appear with frayed seams and spilling pockets. — Diane Ackerman

A kiss is like singing into someone's mouth. — Diane Ackerman

hope and uncertainty [are] the twin ingredients necessary for romance to thrive. ... Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope, or fails as often, as love. — Diane Ackerman

Life Lessons by Diane Ackerman

1. Diane Ackerman's poetry encourages us to embrace life's beauty and appreciate the small moments that make up our lives. She reminds us to be mindful of our environment and to take time to appreciate the wonders of nature.
2. Ackerman's work emphasizes the importance of living life with intention and purpose, and to strive for meaningful connections with ourselves and others.
3. By reading Ackerman's poetry, we can learn to be more present in our lives and to appreciate the beauty and joy of the everyday.