“I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
More from Annie Dillard on Life
“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die.”
“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
“Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.”
“When we lose our innocence - when we start feeling the weight of the atmosphere and learn that there's death in the pot - we take leave of our sense.”
“The dedicated life is the life worth living.”
“The surest sign of age is loneliness.”
“Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
Others on Life
Jonathan Safran Foer
22 quotes“Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life.”
Mitch Albom
18 quotes“Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
16 quotes“It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it.”
Henry Miller
15 quotes“Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he h...”
Cormac McCarthy
14 quotes“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”
Lord Byron
14 quotes“Admire exult despise laugh weep - for here There is such matter for all feelings: - Man! Thou pendulum betwixt a smi...”
Joseph Campbell
14 quotes“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you ar...”
Virginia Woolf
14 quotes“. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.”
Sarah Dessen
13 quotes“All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.”
Paulo Coelho
13 quotes“I've noticed that loneliness gets stronger when we try to face it down, but gets weaker when we simply ignore it.”
Margaret Atwood
13 quotes“Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
13 quotes“Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your...”