Quote

Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly possible once more.

Annie Dillard

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Annie Dillard
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: April 30
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Annie Dillard Doak
Inspirational
Humanly
Earth
Sleeves
Back
Roll
Nothing
Boundaries
Must
Move
Knowing
Possible
Moving

More quotes by Annie Dillard

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Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe.
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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.
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The soul may ask God for anything, and never fail.
Annie Dillard
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You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world's hard work.
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The dear, stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel.
Annie Dillard
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Admire the world for never ending on you -- as you would an opponent, without taking your eyes away from him, or walking away.
Annie Dillard
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The irrational haunts the metaphysical.
Annie Dillard
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There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been.
Annie Dillard
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It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.
Annie Dillard
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Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.
Annie Dillard
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As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.
Annie Dillard
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We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
Annie Dillard
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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
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The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God.
Annie Dillard
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What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch--with an electric hiss and cry--this speckled mineral sphere, our present world.
Annie Dillard
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If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.
Annie Dillard
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You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader's arm, like a drunk, and say, 'And then I did this and it was so interesting.
Annie Dillard
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The Pulitzer is more useful than meaningful.
Annie Dillard
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When I teach, I preach. I thump the Bible. I exhort my students morally. I talk to them about the dedicated life.
Annie Dillard
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One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.
Annie Dillard