Quote

An animal on a leash is not tamed by the owner. The owner is extending himself through the leash to that part of his personality which is pure dog, that part of him which just wants to eat, sleep, bark, hump chairs, wet the floor in joy, and drink out of a toilet bowl.

Diane Ackerman

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Diane Ackerman
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 7
Author
Naturalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Waukegan
Illinois
Part
Dog
Toilets
Personality
Owner
Hump
Drink
Bowl
Leash
Pure
Wet
Leashes
Joy
Bowls
Tamed
Wants
Chairs
Toilet
Animal
Floor
Extending
Sleep
Owners
Bark

More quotes by Diane Ackerman

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Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.
Diane Ackerman
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It's animal by animal that you save a species.
Diane Ackerman
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I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.
Diane Ackerman
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We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.
Diane Ackerman
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In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations.
Diane Ackerman
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Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.
Diane Ackerman
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Though we marry as adults, we don't marry adults. We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative.
Diane Ackerman
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habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot.
Diane Ackerman
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Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or die, and yet we're reluctant to linger over its names. Without a supple vocabulary, we can't even talk or think about it directly.
Diane Ackerman
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The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.
Diane Ackerman
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Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.
Diane Ackerman
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Adult bats don't weigh much. They're mainly fur and appetite.
Diane Ackerman
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I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.
Diane Ackerman
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[On gardens:] I think they're sanctuaries for the mind and spirit. ... It's easy to feel wonder-struck in a garden, especially if you cultivate delight.
Diane Ackerman
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Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth.
Diane Ackerman
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We humans are obsessed with lights...Perhaps it is our way of hurling the constellations back at the sky.
Diane Ackerman
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...for most people in the [Jewish] Ghetto [of Warsaw] nature lived only in memory -- no parks, birds, or greenery existed in the Ghetto -- and they suffered the loss of nature like a phantom-limb pain, an amputation that scrambled the body's rhythms, starved the senses, and made basic ideas about the world impossible for children to fathom.
Diane Ackerman
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Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.
Diane Ackerman
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Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.
Diane Ackerman
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What would dawn have been like, had you awakened? It would have sung through your bones. All I can do this morning is let it sing through mine.
Diane Ackerman