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The world knew you before you knew the world.

Annie Dillard

Caring passionately about something isn’t against nature, and it isn’t against human nature. It’s what we’re here to do.
ANNIE DILLARD

Care Human Nature Nature Passionate
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
I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.
ANNIE DILLARD

Hope Inspirational Positive Wake Up
The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
ANNIE DILLARD

Dedicate Giving Heart Life Live Worth
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
I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.
ANNIE DILLARD

Beam Cause Inspirational Light Myself Path Practice See Try Wave
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
ANNIE DILLARD

Emergency Extend Kind Live Survival
The world knew you before you knew the world.
ANNIE DILLARD

Judgment World
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
The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.
ANNIE DILLARD

Answer Beauty Grace Performance Sense Thinking Try
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
ANNIE DILLARD

Air Book Breathe Live Reading
You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world’s hard work.
ANNIE DILLARD

Heart Prayer Serve Sing Work Hard World
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARD

Control Fancy Sleep Switch
These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.
ANNIE DILLARD

Deason Inspirational Present Pure
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
The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
ANNIE DILLARD

Creation Gesture Stuff

The world knew you before you knew the world.

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The world knew you before you knew the world.

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