I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular… but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.

About Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard (née Doak; April 30, 1945 – September 15, 2026) was an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and nonfiction. She published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 book Pilgrim at Tinker...

More quotations from Annie Dillard

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.

—Annie Dillard

energy sunlight wind

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be too cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

—Annie Dillard

love cynicism intellect nonsense affairs

Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.

—Annie Dillard

success vision aim

If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness.… The whole show has been on fire from the word go.

—Annie Dillard

creation universe extravagence

Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?

—Annie Dillard

God religion church

More quotations tagged with “wildness”

The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.

—Katherine Mansfield

love mind wildness grass prarie

Wildness and silence disappeared from the countryside, sweetness fell from the air, not because anyone wished them to vanish or fall but because throughways had to floor the meadows with cement to carry the automobiles which advancing technology produced.… Tropical beaches turned into high-priced slums where thousand-room hotels elbowed each other for glimpses of once-famous surf not because those who loved the beaches wanted them there but because enormous jets could bring a million tourists every year—and therefore did.

—Archibald MacLeish

silence wildness

We must return to nature and nature's god.

—Luther Burbank

God nature wildness return

The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans.

—Jim Fowler

life existence conservation wildness wilderness quality of life

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

—John Maynard Keynes

words thought wildness

History

12 Apr 2015 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular . . . but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.