Life & Wisdom Quote by Jim Harrison

Harrison opens with a sly confession dressed up as common sense: "Naturally" signals that the wish is embarrassingly human, almost childish in its appetite. Seven epiphanies a day is an exaggerated quota, the spiritual equivalent of fast food - not just illumination, but illumination on demand. The line is funny because it admits what most serious-minded people won’t: we want transcendence the way we want good weather, as a default setting.

Then he pivots to the real bruise: "an earth not so apparently devoid of angels". Apparently is doing the heavy lifting. Harrison isn’t staking a metaphysical claim that angels don’t exist; he’s naming the lived impression that the world, as experienced through bills, sickness, grief, and routine, feels unaccompanied. The subtext is less theology than loneliness. Angels here are shorthand for signs - for the sense that the mess has witnesses, that suffering has an audience more tender than fate.

Context matters: Harrison’s work circles appetite and austerity, a writer who loves the physical world while refusing to romanticize it. This sentence captures that tension. It concedes the craving for meaning without pretending it’s reliably met. The intent isn’t to scold the desire for epiphany; it’s to locate it as a coping strategy, a fantasy of constant reassurance. What makes the line land is its balance of yearning and resignation: we would prefer a world that keeps proving it cares, but we wake up in one that rarely bothers to perform.