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
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that past notions of heroism and purity are illusions; the present is shaped by those who currently exist.
Annie Dillard reflects on the idea that the past is often romanticized, and the qualities we attribute to earlier generations—such as heroism and purity—are more complex than we tend to acknowledge. She asserts that our current reality is formed by the people living in it, suggesting a sense of shared human experience across time and an acceptance of our imperfections.
Themes
HeroismPurityPresentHuman ExperienceImperfection
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech reflecting on today's societal challenges, this quote can highlight how we must embrace our current circumstances rather than idealizing the past.
More from Annie Dillard
All quotes →Geography 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
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Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenor of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal?
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Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
Oscar WildeRead