“Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.”
Source: A Natural History of the Senses
Quotes from book
A Natural History of the Senses
A Natural History of the Senses is a 1990 non-fiction book by American author, poet, and naturalist Diane Ackerman. In this book, Ackerman examines both the science of how the different senses work, and the varied means by which different cultures have sought to stimulate the senses. The book was the inspiration for the five-part Nova miniseries Mystery of the Senses in which Ackerman appeared as the presenter.“What is most amazing is not how our senses span distance or cultures, but how they span time. Our senses connect us intimately to the past, connect us in ways that most of our cherished ideas never could.”
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1991)
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1991), p. 229
Postscript (p. 305)
A Natural History of the Senses (1990)
Postscript (p. 301)
A Natural History of the Senses (1990)
“My muse is male, has the silvery complexion of the moon, and never speaks to me directly.”
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 6 “Synesthesia” (p. 299)
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 5 “Vision” (p. 281)
The sad truth is that attractive people do better in school, where they receive more help, better grades, and less punishment; at work, where they are rewarded with higher pay, more prestigious jobs, and faster promotions; in finding mates, where they tend to be in control of the relationships and make most of the decisions; and among total strangers, who assume them to be interesting, honest, virtuous, and successful. After all, in fairy tales, the first stories most of us hear, the heroes are handsome, the heroines are beautiful, and the wicked sots are ugly. Children learn implicitly that good people are beautiful and bad people are ugly, and society restates that message in many subtle ways as they grow older. So perhaps it’s not surprising that handsome cadets at West Point achieve a higher rank by the time they graduate, or that a judge is more likely to give an attractive criminal a shorter sentence.
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 5 “Vision” (pp. 271-272)
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 5 “Vision” (p. 256)
But in truth an apple is everything but red.
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 5 “Vision” (p. 252)
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 4 “Hearing” (p. 180)
Creatures who will one day vanish from the earth in the ultimate subtraction of sensuality that we call death, we spend our lives courting death, fomenting wars, watching sickening horror movies in which maniacs slash and torture their victims, hurrying our own deaths in fast cars, cigarette smoking, suicide. Death obsesses us, as well it might, but our response to it is so strange. Faced with tornadoes chewing up homes, with dust storms ruining crops, floods and earthquakes swallowing up whole cities, with ghostly diseases that gnaw at one’s bone marrow, cripple, or craze—rampant miseries that need no special bidding, but come freely, giving their horror like alms—you’d think human beings would hold out against the forces of Nature, combine their efforts and become allies, not create devastation of their own, not add to one another’s miseries. Death does such fine work without us. How strange that people, whole countries sometimes, wish to be its willing accomplices.
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 3 “Taste” (p. 170)
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 3 “Taste” (p. 131)
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 3 “Taste” (p. 130)
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 2 “Touch” (p. 115)
