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Not Much Is Known About Alligators. They Don't Train Well. And They're Unwieldy And Rowdy To Work With In Laboratories.
-Diane Ackerman
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Not Much Is Known

Diane Ackerman
...
Not Much Is Known About Alligators. They Don't Train Well. And They're Unwieldy And Rowdy To Work With In Laboratories.

Understanding the Quote: "not much is known about alligators. they don't train well. and they're..."

This quote by Diane Ackerman reflects deeply on the theme of rowdy. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Rowdy, Alligators, Wells, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Diane Ackerman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on rowdy and alligators. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Rowdy
Alligators
Wells
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Touching
Age
When I Set A Glass Prism On A Windowsill And Allow The Sun To Flood Through It, A Spectrum Of Colors Dances On The Floor. What We Call "white" Is A Rainbow Of Colored Rays Packed Into A Small Space. The Prism Sets Them Free. Love Is The White Light Of Emotion.
Love Is
Space
Glasses
Above All, We Ask The Poet To Teach Us A Way Of Seeing.
Way
Poet
Teach
Home Is Where The Heart Is, We Say, Rubbing The Flint Of One Abstraction Against Another.
Home
Heart
Home Is Where The Heart Is
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.
Curiosity
Life Is
Hills
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.
Army
Love Is
White
I Don't Want To Get To The End Of My Life And Find That I Lived Just The Length Of It. I Want To Have Lived The Width Of It As Well.
Inspirational
Life
Motivational
When You Consider Something Like Death, After Which (there Being No News Flash To The Contrary) We May Well Go Out Like A Candle Flame, Then It Probably Doesn't Matter If We Try Too Hard, Are Awkward Sometimes, Care For One Another Too Deeply, Are Excessively Curious About Nature, Are Too Open To Experience, Enjoy A Nonstop Expense Of The Senses In An Effort To Know Life Intimately And Lovingly.
Flames
Life And Death
Effort
As People Flock To Urban Centers Where Ground Space Is Limited, Cities With Green Walls And Roofs And Skyscraper Farms Offer Improved Health And Well-being, Renewable Resources, Reliable Food Supply, And Relief To The Environment.
Wall
Cities
Space
The Senses Don't Just Make Sense Of Life In Bold Or Subtle Acts Of Clarity, They Tear Reality Apart Into Vibrant Morsels And Reassemble Them Into A Meaningful Pattern.
Meaningful
Reality
Tears
I Believe Consciousness Is Brazenly Physical, A Raucous Mirage The Brain Creates To Help Us Survive.
Believe
Brain
Mirages
I Think That Very Often Younger Writers Don't Appreciate How Much Hard Work Is Involved In Writing. The Part Of Writing That's Magic Is The Thinnest Rind On The World Of Creation. Most Of A Writer's Life Is Just Work. It Happens To Be A Kind Of Work That The Writer Finds Fulfilling In The Same Way That A Watchmaker Can Happily Spend Countless Hours Fiddling Over The Tiny Cogs And Bits Of Wire. ... I Think The People Who End Up Being Writers Are People Who Don't Get Bored Doing That Kind Of Tight Focus In Small Areas.
Hard Work
Writing
Thinking
Our Sense Of Safety Depends On Predictability, So Anything Living Outside The Usual Rules We Suspect To Be An Outlaw, A Ghoul.
Ghouls
Safety
Usual
Nature Is More Like A Seesaw Than A Crystal, A Never-ending Conga Line Of Bold Moves And Corrections.
Moving
Lines
Crystals
Fear Is Danger To Your Body, But Disgust Is Danger To Your Soul.
Soul
Body
Danger
We Are Defined By How We Place Our Attention.
Attention
Defined
Things That Live By Night Live Outside The Realm Of 'normal' Time And So Suggest Living Outside The Realm Of Good And Evil, Since We Have Moralistic Feelings About Time. Chauvinistic About Our Human Need To Wake By Day And Sleep By Night, We Come To Associate Night Dwellers With People Up To No Good At A Time When They Have The Jump On The Rest Of Us And Are Defying Nature, Defying Their Circadian Rhythms.
Sleep
Night
People
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.
Passion
Fighting
Love Is
We Humans Are Obsessed With Lights...perhaps It Is Our Way Of Hurling The Constellations Back At The Sky.
Light
Sky
Way
As A Species, We've Somehow Survived Large And Small Ice Ages, Genetic Bottlenecks, Plagues, World Wars And All Manner Of Natural Disasters, But I Sometimes Wonder If We'll Survive Our Own Ingenuity.
War
Ice
Age
Hope And Uncertainty [are] The Twin Ingredients Necessary For Romance To Thrive. ... Nothing Begins With So Much Excitement And Hope, Or Fails As Often, As Love.
Romance
Ingredients
Twins
And Yet, Words Are The Passkeys To Our Souls. Without Them, We Can't Really Share The Enormity Of Our Lives.
Soul
Share
Our Lives
I Watched Her Face Switch Among The Radio Stations Of Memory
Memories
Radio
Faces
We Would Lie On Coral Sand, Below Sugary Stars, Watching Cassiopeia Mount Her Throne And The Great Bear Wash Its Paws In The South. I Would Say, "i Have A Secret To Tell You." And, Folding Me In Your Arms, Boyish And Sly, You Would Answer: "whisper It Into My Mouth.
Stars
Lying
Secret
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.
Stars
Thinking
Clouds
In Manhattan Last Month I Heard A Woman Borrowing The Jargon Of Junkies To Say To Another, 'want To Do Some Chocolate?'
Chocolate
Lasts
Months
People Search For Love As If It Were A City Lost Beneath The Desert Dunes, Where Pleasure Is The Law, The Streets Are Lined With Brocade Cushions, And The Sun Never Sets.
Law
Cities
People
Love Is Like A Batik Created From Many Emotional Colors, It Is A Fabric Whose Pattern And Brightness May Vary.
Love Is
Emotional
Color
Wonder Is The Heaviest Element On The Periodic Table. Even A Tiny Fleck Of It Stops Time.
Healing
Elements
Tables
Wonder Is A Bulky Emotion. When You Let It Fill Your Heart And Mind, There Isn't Room For Anxiety, Distress Or Anything Else.
Heart
Anxiety
Mind
Flying Has Changed How We Imagine Our Planet, Which We Have Seen Whole From Space, So That Even The Farthest Nations Are Ecological Neighbors. It Has Changed Our Ideas About Time. When You Can Gird The Earth At 1,000 M.p.h., How Can You Endure The Tardiness Of A Plumber? Most Of All, Flying Has Changed Our Sense Of Our Body, The Personal Space In Which We Live, Now Elastic And Swift. I Could Be In Bombay For Afternoon Tea If I Wished. My Body Isn't Limited By Its Own Weaknesses; It Can Rush Through Space.
Ideas
Space
Flying
Our Skin Is What Stands Between Us And The World.
Skins
World
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.
Way
Nuggets
Moments
To Begin To Understand The Gorgeous Fever That Is Consciousness, We Must Try To Understand The Senses And What They Can Tell Us About The Ravishing World We Have The Privilege To Inhabit.
Trying
Fever
World
Love, Like Truth, Is The Unassailable Defense.
Love
Defense
Truth Is
For If I Do Something, I Never Do It Thoughtlessly.
Ifs
Poetry Had Everything To Teach Me About Life.
Poetry
Teach
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.
Inspirational
Thinking
Self
If Cynicism Is Inevitable As One Ages, So Is The Yearning For Innocence. To Children Heaven Is Being An Adult, And To Adults Heaven Is Being Children Again.
Children
Heaven
Age
It's So Acceptably Easy For A Woman Not To Strive Too Hard, Not To Be Too Adventure-crazed, Not To Take Too Many Risks, Not To Enjoy Sex With Full Candor ... It Isn't Seemly For A Woman To Have That Much Zest.
Sex
Adventure
Zest
As Anyone Who Has Received Or Dispensed Psychotherapy Knows, It's A Profession Whose Mainspring Is Love. Nearly Everyone Who Visits A Therapist Has A Love Disorder Of One Sort Or Another, And Each Has A Story To Tell - Of Love Lost Or Denied, Love Twisted Or Betrayed, Love Perverted Or Shackled To Violence. Broken Attachments Litter The Office Floors Like Pick-up Sticks. People Appear With Frayed Seams And Spilling Pockets.
Lost Love
Attachment
People
Nothing Reveals More About The Inner Life Of A People Than Their Arts.
Art
People
Inner Life
Nothing Is More Memorable Than A Smell. One Scent Can Be Unexpected, Momentary And Fleeting, Yet Conjure Up A Childhood Summer Beside A Lake In The Mountains; Another, A Moonlit Beach; A Third, A Family Dinner Of Pot Roast And Sweet Potatoes During A Myrtle-mad August In A Midwestern Town. Smells Detonate Softly In Our Memory Like Poignant Land Mines Hidden Under The Weedy Mass Of Years. Hit A Tripwire Of Smell And Memories Explode All At Once. A Complex Vision Leaps Out Of The Undergrowth.
Love
Summer
Beach
Because We Can't Escape Our Ancient Hunger To Live Close To Nature, We Encircle The House With Lawns And Gardens, Install Picture Windows, Adopt Pets And Boston Ferns, And Scent Everything That Touches Our Lives.
Garden
Boston
House
Give A Man Enough Rope And He'll Wrap Himself Around Your Little Finger.
Men
Giving
Rope
The Well Of Nature Is Full Today. Time To Go Outside And Take A Drink.
Vices
Today
Drink
As The Most Social Apes, We Inhabit A Mirror-world In Which Every Important Relationship, Whether With Spouse, Friend Or Child, Shapes The Brain, Which In Turn Shapes Our Relationships.
Children
Mirrors
Important Relationships
We Can't Enchant The World, Which Makes Its Own Magic; But We Can Enchant Ourselves By Paying Deep Attention
Magic
Attention
World
If We Mammals Don't Get Something To Eat Every Day Or Two, Our Temperature Drops, All Our Signs Fall Off, And We Begin To Starve. Living At Biological Red Alert, It's Not Surprising How Obsessed We Are With Food; I'm Just Amazed We Don't Pace And Fret About It All The Time.
Fall
Two
Mammals
For The Longest Time I Didn't Realize I Was Creative - I Just Thought I Was Strange.
Creativity
Creative
Strange
Variety Is The Pledge That Matter Makes To Living Things.
Diversity
Matter
Living Things
Part Of The Irony Of Environmentalism Is Questing For Solutions When You Know You're Part Of The Problem.
Irony
Problem
Knows
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.
Dog
Sleep
Animal
Like Love, Travel Makes You Innocent Again.
Like Love
Innocent
We Try To Exile Ourselves More And More From Nature - Not Always Consciously: We Build Houses; We Dismiss Nature; Nature Has To Be Outside, Because We're Inside. God Forbid Something Like A Cockroach Comes Inside, Or Some Dust.
Dust
House
Trying
In Rare Moments Of Deep Play, We Can Lay Aside Our Sense Of Self, Shed Time's Continuum, Ignore Pain, And Sit Quietly In The Absolute Present, Watching The World's Ordinary Miracles. No Mind Or Heart Hobbles. No Analyzing Or Explaining. No Questing For Logic. No Promises. No Goals. No Relationships. No Worry. One Is Completely Open To Whatever Drama May Unfold.
Fun
Pain
Drama
Look In The Mirror. The Face That Pins You With Its Double Gaze Reveals A Chastening Secret.
Mirrors
Knowing Who You Are
Keeping Secrets
There Is That Unique Moment When One Confronts Something New And Astonishment Begins.
Weekend
Unique
Astonishment
What An Odd, Ruminating, Noisy, Self-interrupting Conversation We Conduct With Ourselves From Birth To Death.
Self
Birth
Odd
The Only And Absolute Perfect Union Of Two Is When A Baby Hangs Suspended In Its Mother's Womb, Like A Tiny Madman In A Padded Cell, Attached To Her, Feeling Her Blood And Hormones, And Moods Play Through Its Body, Feeling Her Feelings.
Mother
Baby
Cells
Of All The Errands Life Seems To Be Running, Of All The Mysteries That Enchant Us, Love Is My Favorite
Running
Love Is
Errands
Artificial Intelligence Is Growing Up Fast, As Are Robots Whose Facial Expressions Can Elicit Empathy And Make Your Mirror Neurons Quiver.
Growing Up
Mirrors
Expression
Hit A Tripwire Of Smell And Memories Explode All At Once. A Complex Vision Leaps Out Of The Undergrowth.
Memories
Smell
Vision
For Me, Life Offers So Many Complexly Appealing Moments That Two Beautiful Objects May Be Equally Beautiful For Different Reasons And At Different Times. How Can One Choose?
Beautiful
Two
Different
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