Annie Dillard Quotes

Nothing should so occupy the mind of the Christian than discovering God each day.

I stare at her. I've always known that it's impossible to argue with Belinda, not because she's particularly good at it, but because she's so bad at it- that there is no common ground to work from. She simply sees the world she wants to see it and no amount of logic can change her mind.

God illumines the mind and shines within it. One cannot know God by means of the mind. One can but turn the mind inwards and merge it in God.

The most difficult thing in the world, it seems to me, is to realize that I am a child of God; to keep that in my mind all the time.

Open your eyes and the whole world is full of God.

When the heart is open, it's easier for the mind to be turned toward God.

Mysticism is the passionate longing of the soul for God.

I fell away from you, my God, and I went astray, too far astray from you, the support of my youth, and I became to myself a land of want.

What do you want to do sadhana for? The aim should not be the satisfaction of egoism: "I want to be a great yogi; I shall have so much power and with that power I shall establish myself in the world." All such thoughts must be thrown far away.

You will not find what you want in the world, only in the Father.

Life in this world is an attempt to see God.

Keep your mental and spiritual contact points cleaned so that God can operate through your mind.

This thing that haunts you, that never seems satisfied, the cravings in your soul that you are unable to satiate through all the success that the world can bring this is your soul screaming for God.

I know only enough of God to want to worship him, by any means ready to hand.

I want to be the toughest photographer in the world.

The world is a living being - one nature, one soul. Keep that in mind.

Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.

We can't escape from the world anymore; we can't escape from the mind. We need to enter surrender while we are in the world. That seems to be the path that is effective in the world that we live in now.

Our heart is restless until it rests in You.

He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love; he had had enough of it; he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.

Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.

I want to breathe in the Spiritual.

My mind can take no hold on the present world, nor rest in it a moment, but my whole nature rushes onward with irresistible force towards a future and better state of being.

When you drink in nature through your senses, you deepen your awareness of the great silent intelligence flowing through all things. You nourish your mind, body, and spirit as you connect to the divine love of Being.