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Annie Dillard

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Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with god, or you can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials without god. But you cannot live outside the welter of colliding materials.
From For the Time Being: Essays
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
From The Writing Life
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.
From The Writing Life
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.
From Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
From The Maytrees
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Under her high brows, she eyed him straight on and straight across. She had gone to girls' schools, he recalled later. Those girls looked straight at you.
From The Maytrees
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Motivational
Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.
From An American Childhood: A Poignant Memoir About Parents and Passion in 1950s Pittsburgh
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Spend the afternoon, you can't take it with you.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational, Life
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them...
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
"No", said the priest, "not if you did not know."
"Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical, Religion
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with god, or you can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials without god. But you cannot live outside the welter of colliding materials.
From For the Time Being: Essays
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
From The Writing Life
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.
From The Writing Life
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.
From Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
From The Maytrees
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Under her high brows, she eyed him straight on and straight across. She had gone to girls' schools, he recalled later. Those girls looked straight at you.
From The Maytrees
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Motivational
Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.
From An American Childhood: A Poignant Memoir About Parents and Passion in 1950s Pittsburgh
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Spend the afternoon, you can't take it with you.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational, Life
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them...
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
"No", said the priest, "not if you did not know."
"Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical, Religion
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with god, or you can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials without god. But you cannot live outside the welter of colliding materials.
From For the Time Being: Essays
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
From The Writing Life
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.
From The Writing Life
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.
From Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
From The Maytrees
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Under her high brows, she eyed him straight on and straight across. She had gone to girls' schools, he recalled later. Those girls looked straight at you.
From The Maytrees
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Motivational
Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.
From An American Childhood: A Poignant Memoir About Parents and Passion in 1950s Pittsburgh
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Spend the afternoon, you can't take it with you.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational, Life
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them...
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
"No", said the priest, "not if you did not know."
"Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.
From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical, Religion