Diane Ackerman: Living

Diane Ackerman is Author, poet, naturalist. Explore interesting quotes on living.

Diane Ackerman: 60 quotes6 likes

“I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to live the width of it as well.”

As quoted in Meditations for Women Who Do Too (1991) by Anne Wilson Schaef

“Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.”

“Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?”

“So much of our life passes in a comfortable blur. Living on the senses requires an easily triggered sense of marvel, a little extra energy, and most people are lazy about life. Life is something that happens to them while they wait for death.”

Diane Ackerman book A Natural History of the Senses

Postscript (p. 305)
A Natural History of the Senses (1990)

“That evening, as I watched the sunset’s pinwheels of apricot and mauve slowly explode into red ribbons, I thought: The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on.”

Diane Ackerman book A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 5 “Vision” (p. 256)