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We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

Annie Dillard

I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day, as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive.
ANNIE DILLARD

Awareness Break Up Dive Rise Sea Skin Time
You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.
ANNIE DILLARD

Darkness Demand Finding Inspirational Necessary Outside Requirement Stars
I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.
ANNIE DILLARD

Cool Eyes Flame Look See Spark Tinder Water
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.
ANNIE DILLARD

Inspirational Live Spend Time
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
ANNIE DILLARD

Emergency Extend Kind Live Survival
You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
ANNIE DILLARD

Build Inspirational Jump Time Wings
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time – give it, give it all, give it now.
ANNIE DILLARD

Giving Lose Play Shoot Writing
The world knew you before you knew the world.
ANNIE DILLARD

Judgment World
Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
ANNIE DILLARD

Love Man She Woman
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.
ANNIE DILLARD

Grasp Necessary Obedient Passion Thinking
I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.
ANNIE DILLARD

Hope Inspirational Positive Wake Up
Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand – that of finding a workable compromise between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.
ANNIE DILLARD

Absurd Business Compromise Fact Finding Hands Ideas Work
Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
ANNIE DILLARD

Afternoon Spend Travel Vacation
It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.
ANNIE DILLARD

Book Happiness Literature Nature Night Reading Words
At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.
ANNIE DILLARD

Empty Listen Mountain Ready Wait Wood Yourself
You can’t test courage cautiously.
ANNIE DILLARD

Caution Courage One Liner Test

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

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We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

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Popular Authors

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