“Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.”

—  Diane Ackerman , book A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of the Senses

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world." by Diane Ackerman?
Diane Ackerman photo
Diane Ackerman 30
Author, poet, naturalist 1948

Related quotes

Jeanette Winterson photo

“In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The World and Other Places: Stories

Henry Adams photo

“In plain words, Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.”

Henry Adams book The Education of Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Source: The Education of Henry Adams

Georg Büchner photo

“The world is chaos. Nothingness is the yet-to-be-born god of the world.”

Georg Büchner Danton's Death

Act IV
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

Elia M. Ramollah photo

“Solve the big problems inside the small ones. And it is from the small issues that a pattern can be shaped in solving the big ones.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

The Great Master of Thought (Amen- Vol.3), Observing management

John Cheever photo

“At my back I hear the word—”homosexual”—and it seems to split my world in two…. It is ignorance, our ignorance of one another, that creates this terrifying erotic chaos. Information, a crumb of information, seems to light the world.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

The Sixties, 1966 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

Joan Miró photo

“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

from: Joan Miro: Selected Writings and Interviews, M.Rowell, Thames and Hudson, 1987
1940 - 1960

Germaine Greer photo

“The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

Introduction
The Female Eunuch (1970)
Context: The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well. It is unlikely that the techniques of liberation spontaneously adopted by women will be in such fierce conflict as exists between warring self-interests and conflicting dogmas, for they will not seek to eliminate all systems but their own. However diverse they may be, they need not be utterly irreconcilable, because they will not be conquistatorial.

Jordan Peterson photo

“The Word that speaks Truth into Chaos at the beginning of time, to generate habitable order that is Good – that's the story.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

“Words were shapes and sounds to him. He saw them, as if he were listening to an unknown language, in shapes.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Maeve Gilmore (his widow), Introduction to A Book of Nonsense, p. 10

Meher Baba photo

“All this world confusion and chaos was inevitable and no one is to blame.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

The Universal Message (1958)
Context: All this world confusion and chaos was inevitable and no one is to blame. What had to happen has happened; and what has to happen will happen. There was and is no way out except through my coming in your midst. I had to come, and I have come. I am the Ancient One.

Related topics