Quotes by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“There is no sin punished more implacably by nature than the sin of resistance to change”

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.”

“Life is a gift, given in trust - like a child.”

“A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side.”

“By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.”

“Try to look at everything through the eyes of a child.”

“Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego”

“What a commentary on civilization, when being alone is being suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it - like a secret vice”

“My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen - no retouching, no shadows, no flattery - just stark me”

“The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.”

“When the wedding march sounds the resolute approach, the clock no longer ticks, it tolls the hour.. The figures in the aisle are no longer individuals, they symbolize the human race.”

“Duration is not a test of truth or falsehood.”

“It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.”

“If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.”

“I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly”

“Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me.”

“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach; one can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few”

“When you look closely people are so strange & so complicated that theyre actually beautiful.”

“A Good Relationship Has a Pattern Like a DanceA good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozarts. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back -- it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.”

it takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeded.