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 is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the connection between the physical energy of sunlight and the intangible, spiritual energy that wind represents.
Annie Dillard's quote encapsulates the idea that the forces of nature, such as sunlight and wind, embody different types of energyβone muscular and physical, the other spiritual and ethereal. By comparing sunlight's physical intensity with the more subtle essence of wind, she highlights the interconnectedness and duality of the natural world, suggesting that both have important roles in our experiences and perceptions.
Themes
SunlightWindEnergyNatureSpirituality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a nature documentary to emphasize the interplay between the physical and spiritual energies in the environment.
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
Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come... Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed, to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder.
Wangari MaathaiRead
Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us.
W. E. B. Du BoisRead
The construction of an airplane is simple compared with the evolutionary achievement of a bird. If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
Charles LindberghRead
I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston HughesRead
Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There's no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here.
Sylvia EarleRead
People in cities may forget the soil for as long as a hundred years, but Mother Nature's memory is long and she will not let them forget indefinitely.
Henry A. WallaceRead