Annie May Quotes & Sayings

There is a whole generation of young people just like us wandering around Europe and the rest of the world, trying to find some meaning for why they are alive and what they should choose to do with their time. When Martha leaves and we sit in front of the fire in the living room, I look to Lily until she turns to me and I can see the grief that hides just under the surface of her expression. We are, or at least were, two of those lost souls: wanderers, backpackers, season workers, Wwoofers, Workawayers, travellers: searching the world for something or someplace to hold on to. And we have come home not because we have retired from trying to find answers and are ready to settle into adulthood, but because my death has come upon us fast and unexpected. I am not the first person of this generation of travellers- or any person who lives in this godless, superficial society- to die. But I think that it feels to Lily and to me, my mother too perhaps, that I may very well be. — Annie Fisher

I swear." His hand came up in the three-finger Boy Scout pledge.
Annie couldn't help by laugh. "You may be many things, Jake. But an innocent Boy Scout isn't one of them. — Candis Terry

Even if things are as bad as they could possible be, and as meaningless, then matters of truth are themselves indifferent; we may as well please our sensibilities and, with as much spirit as we can muster, go out with a buck and a wing. — Annie Dillard

Jeremiah is a most melancholy prophet. He wails from beginning to end; he is often childish, is rarely indecent, and although it may be blasphemy to say so, he and his 'Lamentations' are really not worth reading. — Annie Besant

I think human self-hatred may be the great untold story of the millennium. It's the common thread linking deep ecology and animal rights, the love and money we lavish on pets, the uneasy longing for extraterrestrials to be meddling with us. — Annie Gottlieb

Wrong is wrong. Wrong is out there and lives among us. When do you get tired of voting for the lesser of the two evils? Wrong cannot be fought unless you understand what you are fighting against. Wrong can be fought against by using its own energy against itself. Let the system destroy itself. Accelerate the process by backing your resources out of the system. The system may not collapse in your lifetime, but you have the ability to help set up future generations, your children's children, to have a better life even further away from the system. — Annie Berdel

It should surprise no one that the life of the writer
such as it is
is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world. This explains why so many books describe the author's childhood. A writer's childhood may well have been the occasion of his only firsthand experience. — Annie Dillard

These homes of love we build, house many rooms, sanded and painted in the shades and colours of our life, furnished with those moments that, however inconsequential they may seem to others, have in fact, defined us. — Annie Proulx

Pleasure at simply being there had him swinging fast across the road, shooting up the snaking lane carved into the rock, then, in shock, slamming on the brakes to avoid crashing into a high iron gate.
He scowled at it for a moment before the intercom beside his car buzzed on.
"Templeton House.May i help you?"
"What the hell is this? Who put this damn thing up?"
"I-Mr. Joshua?"
Recognizing the voice, he struggled to bank down on his irritation. "Annie, open this ridiculous gate,will you? And unless we're under attack, leave the damn thing open. — Nora Roberts

Van Gogh is utterly dead; the world may be fixed, but it never was broken. And shadow itself may resolve into beauty. — Annie Dillard

It suddenly struck me that Dawsey is a lonesome person. I think it may be that he has always been lonely, but he didn't mind before, and now he minds. — Annie Barrows

As a man may be born with a mathematical faculty, and by training that faculty year after year may immensely increase his mathematical capacity, so may a man be born with certain faculties within him, faculties belonging to the soul, which he can develop by training and by discipline. — Annie Besant

The soul may ask God for anything, and never fail. — Annie Dillard

Although we hear the buzz in our ears and the crashing of jaws at our heels, we can look around as those who are nibbled but unbroken, from the shimmering vantage of the living. Here may not be the cleanest, newest place, but that clean timeless place that vaults on either side of this one is no place at all. — Annie Dillard

No soul that aspires can ever fail to rise; no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist only that in overcoming them we may grow strong, and they who have suffered are able to save. — Annie Besant

I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books ... so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes. — Annie Dillard

All men die. You may say: 'Is that encouraging?' Surely yes, for when a man dies, his blunders, which are of the form, all die with him, but the things in him that are part of the life never die, although the form be broken. — Annie Besant

What, after all, is the object of education? To train the body in health, vigor and grace, so that it may express the emotions in beauty and the mind with accuracy and strength. — Annie Besant

Control of the tongue! Vital for the man who would try to tread the Path, for no harsh or unkind word, no hasty impatient phrase, may escape from the tongue which is consecrated to service, and which must not injure even an enemy; for that which wounds has no place in the Kingdom of Love. — Annie Besant

A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction. — Annie Proulx

Deep the waves may be and cold,
But Jehovah is our refuge,
And His promise is our hold;
For the Lord Himself hath said it,
He, the faithful God and true:
"When thou comest to the waters
Thou shalt not go down, BUT THROUGH."
Seas of sorrow, seas of trial,
Bitterest anguish, fiercest pain,
Rolling surges of temptation
Sweeping over heart and brain
They shall never overflow us
For we know His word is true;
All His waves and all His billows
He will lead us safely through.
Threatening breakers of destruction,
Doubt's insidious undertow,
Shall not sink us, shall not drag us
Out to ocean depths of woe;
For His promise shall sustain us,
Praise the Lord, whose Word is true!
We shall not go down, or under,
For He saith, "Thou passest THROUGH — Annie Johnson Flint

If we believe in a God at all, we must surely ascribe to him perfection of wisdom and perfection of goodness; we are then forced to conceive of Him - however strange it may sound to those who believe, not only without seeing but also without thinking - as without will, because He must always necessarily pursue the course which is wisest and best. — Annie Besant

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex and it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let it rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself. — Annie Dillard

Man is a spiritual intelligence, who has taken flesh with the object of gaining experience in worlds below the spiritual, in order that he may be able to master and to rule them, and in later ages take his place in the creative and directing hierarchies of the universe. — Annie Besant

So, sweetheart, be careful with the game-playing or you may find yourself in trouble one day. — Annie Seaton

Beauty is no dead thing. It is the manifestation of God in nature. There is not one object in nature untouched by man that is not beautiful, for God's manifestation is beauty. It shines through all His works, and not only in those that may give pleasure to man. — Annie Besant

It is the branch that bears the fruit, That feels the knife, To prune it for a larger growth, A fuller life. Though every budding twig be trimmed, And every grace Of swaying tendril, springing leaf, May lose its place. O you whose life of joy seems left, With beauty shorn; Whose aspirations lie in dust, All bruised and torn, Rejoice, though each desire, each dream, Each hope of thine Will fall and fade; it is the hand Of Love Divine That holds the knife, that cuts and breaks With tenderest touch, That you, whose life has borne some fruit, Might now bear much. Annie Johnson Flint — Lettie B. Cowman

Even in the best and most peacefully civilized countries many occasions arise when a woman versed inthe knowledge and use of firarms may find that imformation and skill of great importance. — Annie Oakley

I suspect that the real moral thinkers end up, wherever they may start, in botany. — Annie Dillard

Let's get one thing straight at the beginning. A lunar eclipse simply will not do. You may have seen a partial solar eclipse, but neither will that do. The sun is such a monster that until a few minutes before totality the light from the sun blasts right around the disk of the moon and the Earth is little changed.

Annie Dillard wrote that the difference between a partial eclipse and a total one is the difference between kissing a man and marrying him.

Just so. So people search out totality, no matter how remote the spot. And so we have come to Svalbard.

- from Out in the Cold — Bill Murray

And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery. — Annie Proulx

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view and to be conceptual with a picture. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative. — Annie Leibovitz

The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return form the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia! — Annie Dillard

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. — Annie Dillard

The creator is not puritan. A creature need not work for a living; creatures may simply steal and suck and be blessed for all that with a share - an enormous share - of the sunlight and air. — Annie Dillard

You quit your house and country, quit your ship, and quit your companions in the tent, saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time." The light on the far side of the blizzard lures you. You walk, and one day you enter the spread heart of silence, where lands dissolve and seas become vapor and ices sublime under unknown stars. This is the end of the Via Negativa, the lightless edge where the slopes of knowledge dwindle, and love for its own sake, lacking an object, begins. — Annie Dillard

God has not forgotten you. He will as readily order about the forces of the universe on your account as He did on Noah's. His plans for Noah were also plans for the whole world through Noah. So they are for you. He will use you for the good of the whole world if you will let Him. SELECTED We may forget; God does not! God's time is never wrong, Never too fast nor too slow; The planets move to its steady pace As the centuries come and go. Stars rise and set by that time, The punctual comets come back With never a second's variance, From the round of their viewless track. Men space their years by the sun, And reckon their months by the moon, Which never arrive too late And never depart too soon. Let us set our clocks by God's, And order our lives by His ways, And nothing can come and nothing can go Too soon or too late in our day. ANNIE JOHNSON FLINT "There are no dates in His fine leisure. — Lettie B. Cowman

Only In Sleep
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child? — Sara Teasdale

I may not be much, but I'm all I think about. — Annie Lamott

Continents may break up, continents may emerge, but the human race is immortal in its origin and in its growth, and there is nothing to be afraid of, even if the foundations of the earth be moved. — Annie Besant

Animation is very singular. Like, even the 'Toy Story' movies. People will go, 'Oh, gosh, you're so lucky, getting to play opposite Tom Hanks!' And it's, like, 'It may have appeared to be that, but we were never in the room together.' — Annie Potts

Most of us have been touched deeply by a few important people: people who, because of their feelings for us and their actions, have helped us to become who we are today. Some of what these special people gave to us was uplifting and inspiring. Sometimes what they gave to us caused pain and only made sense later. Who has been a very special person in your life? Who has shaped you and helped you to be who you are today? Write a letter to this person. Tell the person what he or she has done for you, the impact the person has had, and your feelings about how he or she has touched you. Be as honest and authentic as possible. Write from your heart. You may decide later to send this letter, but this first version should be for you. — Annie McKee

I would say that although my music may be or may have been part of the cultural background fabric of the gay community, I consider myself an outsider who belongs everywhere and nowhere ... Being a human being is what truly counts. That's where you'll find me. — Annie Lennox

The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind. — Annie Besant

Reading a play, you view yourself as part of a whole. You see where the whole thing is going, and so you're willing to go to the very ugly place that your heart may go in order to serve the whole. — Annie Parisse

and the moon passes over the sun and nothing changes and nothing is learned because you have lost your bucket and shovel and no longer care. What if you regain the surface and open your sack and find, instead of treasure, a beast which jumps at you? Or you may not come back at all. The winches may jam, the scaffolding buckle, the air conditioning collapse. You may glance up one day and see by your headlamp the canary keeled over in its cage. You may reach into a cranny for pearls and touch a moray eel. You yank on your rope; it is too late. — Annie Dillard

There's always something extremely personal in the songs, but I may change the point of view from what I actually experienced. — Annie E. Clark

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. — Annie Dillard

The world, with all its beauty, its happiness and suffering, its joys and pains, is planned with the utmost ingenuity, in order that the powers of the Self may be shown forth in manifestation. — Annie Besant

There is no less holiness at this time- as you are reading this- than there was on the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the 30th year, in the 4th month, on the 5th day of the month as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Cheban, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of god. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree at the end of your street than there was under Buddha's bo tree ... . In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in trees. — Annie Dillard

Las Vegas does have its fair share of males in the business. But the male sex trade is often more underground. There are escort services that specify in gay prostitution, although it may not be advertised for the public, but if you are a male calling for a male, or female calling for a female, you will get what you ask for as long as the money is right. — Annie Lobert

A lot of courageous noes make for some beautifully brave yeses. And I guess we never know which ones come first until we are standing at the crossroads, right? It may be easier to determine the yes route, knowing it means saying no. Or maybe it is the no you are sure of, so that tell you where to say yes. — Annie F. Downs

You may then wonder where they have gone, those other dim dots that were you; you in the flesh swimming in a swift river, swinging a bat on the first pitch, opening a footlocker with a screwdriver, inking and painting clowns on cellluloid, stepping out of a revolving door into the swift crowd on a sidewalk, being kissed and kissing till your brain grew smooth, stepping out of the cold woods into a warm field of crows, or lying awake in bed aware of your legs and suddenly aware of all of it, that ceiling above you was under the sky - in what country, what town? — Annie Dillard