Mikasa Ackerman Quotes

This world is cruel. It is also very beautiful ~ Mikasa Ackerman

If I can't, then I'll just die.
But if I win I live.
Unless I fight, I cannot win. ~ Mikasa Ackerman

The world is merciless, and it's also very beautiful. ~ Hajime Isayama

This world is cruel and merciless.. But it's also very beautiful ~ Mikasa Ackerman

I've always found it best to have a routine. I go to my study at the same time every day and climb into my bay window. I may not be inspired every day, but on the days I am, I need to be in place to write. If I'm not particularly inspired, I'll revise or do research or correspondence. ~ Diane Ackerman

Gardeners may create order briefly out of chaos, but nature always gets the last word, and what it says is usually untidy by human standards. But I find all states of nature beautiful, and because I want to delight in my garden, not rule it, I just accept my yen to tame the chaos on one day and let the Japanese beetles run riot on the next. ~ Diane Ackerman

Humans are the most successful invasives of all time. ~ Diane Ackerman

Nothing reveals more about the inner life of a people than their arts ... ~ Diane Ackerman

The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sunstruck hills every day. ~ Diane Ackerman

I just thought it was unconscionable for the Congress to insert itself into this debate. We are particularly unqualified to make that decision and to intrude ourselves into the lives of this family. ~ Gary Ackerman

Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live? ~ Diane Ackerman

Without memories we wouldn't know who we are, how we once were, who we'd like to be in the memorable future. We are the sum of our memories. ~ Diane Ackerman

Love is the great intangible ... Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate
love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again ... Love is the white light of emotion ... Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one can agree on what it is. ~ Diane Ackerman

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae. ~ Diane Ackerman

Each photograph is a magic lamp rubbed by the mind. ~ Diane Ackerman

Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite ~ Diane Ackerman

and pleasure? What is it that I am tasting?' The most eloquent rabbi and writer of Hasidic mysticism, Abraham Joshua Heschel, left Warsaw in 1939 to become an important ~ Diane Ackerman

The well of nature is full today. Time to go outside and take a drink. ~ Diane Ackerman

[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

The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest. ~ Diane Ackerman

As a state senator and then a congressman, I've had the privilege of trying to do good things for people to whom I owe so much and can never fully repay. ~ Gary Ackerman

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. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world. ~ Diane Ackerman

Facts, when combined with ideas, constitute the greatest force in the world. They are greater than armaments, greater than finance, greater than science, business and law because they constitute the common denominator of all of them. ~ Carl W. Ackerman

A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire. ~ Diane Ackerman

Smell is the mute sense, the one without words. ~ Diane Ackerman

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

The garden is a living, pulsing, singing, scratching, warring, erotic, and generally rowdy thing. I may find peace in its midst, but I regard it as a whole with many parts, a plural organism. ~ Diane Ackerman

Horses have made civilization possible. ~ Diane Ackerman

Despite not knowing if what he felt from moment to moment would pass or last forever, he entered fully into his shifting states of violent rage, self-pity, longing, heartbreak, cynicism, without losing the ability to think about what was happening to him. That took courage, I thought, living with the suffering in a mindful way, as an artifact of being, neither good nor bad. ~ Diane Ackerman

It's essential to tailor rehab to what impassions someone. The brain gradually learns by riveting its attention-through endless repetitions. ~ Diane Ackerman

The busy 20th and 21st centuries have made Garfield's era seem remote and irrelevant, its leaders ridiculed for their very obscurity... to the generation of Americans then alive, though, their dramas, humanities, and dignity were a compelling part of daily life. For twenty years after the Civil War, America was led by a group of larger-than-life figures with clay feet who fought and raged and plied their craft with nerve and ambition while following a code of honor riddled with blind spots and inconsistencies; during that time, public involvement in politics reached levels far higher than today. Garfield held a special place: one of the most promising of his generation, shot down in his prime, martyred for taking a principled stand. ~ Kenneth D. Ackerman

Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky webs across the sky. In daydreams, we can maneuver with poise, foiling an opponent, scoring high on fields of glory while crowds cheer, cutting fast to the heart of an adventure. But what dream state is love? Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate –love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as gladiators. ~ Diane Ackerman

On some summer days in New York City, the air hangs thickly visible, like the combined exhalations of eight million souls. Steam rising from vents underground makes you wonder if there isn't one giant sweat gland lodged beneath the city. ~ Diane Ackerman

Deep play arises in such moments of intense enjoyment, focus, control, creativity, timelessness, confidence, volition, lack of self-awareness (hence transcendence) while doing things intrinsically worthwhile, rewarding for their own sake…It feels cleansing because when acting and thinking becomes one, there is no room left for other thoughts. ~ Diane Ackerman

All our senses feed the brain, and if it diets mainly on cruelty and suffering, how can it remain healthy? ~ Diane Ackerman

An occasion, catalyst, or tripwire?permits the poet to reach into herself and haul up whatever nugget of the human condition distracts her at the moment, something that can't be reached in any other way. ~ Diane Ackerman

Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment s unique. ~ Diane Ackerman

Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source? ~ Diane Ackerman

Mystery causes a mental itch, which the brain tries to soothe with the balm of reasonable talk. ~ Diane Ackerman

Whether your mother is a novelist like mine or a third-generation military wife, the idea of a son or daughter being in mortal danger is terrifying. ~ Elliot Ackerman

In the rain forest, no niche lies unused. No emptiness goes unfilled. No gasp of sunlight goes untrapped. In a million vest pockets, a million life-forms quietly tick. No other place on earth feels so lush. Sometimes we picture it as an echo of the original Garden of Eden - a realm ancient, serene, and fertile, where pythons slither and jaguars lope. But it is mainly a world of cunning and savage trees. Truant plants will not survive. The meek inherit nothing. Light is a thick yellow vitamin they would kill for, and they do. One of the first truths one learns in the rain forest is that there is nothing fainthearted or wimpy about plants. ~ Diane Ackerman

Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable. ~ Diane Ackerman

The more we exile ourselves from nature, the more we crave its miracle waters. ~ Diane Ackerman