Quotes by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down ones experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least in ones own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured. And there is another personal satisfaction: that of the people who like to recount their adventures, the diary-keepers, the story-tellers, the letter-writers, a strange race of people who feel half cheated of an experience unless it is retold. It does not really exist until it is put into words. As though a little doubting or dull, they could not see it until it is repeated. For, paradoxically enough, the more unreal an experience becomes - translated from real action into unreal words, dead symbols for life itself - the more vivid it grows. Not only does it seem more vivid, but its essential core becomes clearer. One says excitedly to an audience, Do you see - I cant tell you how strange it was - we all of us felt... although actually, at the time of incident, one was not conscious of such a feeling, and only became so in the retelling. It is as inexplicable as looking all afternoon at a gray stone of a beach, and not realizing, until one tries to put it on canvas, that is in reality bright blue.

...I want first of all - in fact, as an end to these other desires - to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central cor to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact - to borrow from the language of the saints -to live in grace as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony...

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

The here, the now and the individual have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet and -- from time immemorial--the woman.

Woman must come of age by herself -- she must find her true center alone.

If one sets aside timefor a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition,that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone,one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when beingalone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that onepractices it—like a secret vice!

We walk up the beach under the stars. We feel stretched, expanded to take in their compass. They pour into us until we are filled with stars, up to the brim.This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy—even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide.

by and large,mothers and house wives are the only workers who do not have regular time off.They are the great vacationless class

I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they wont grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all ones life trying, trying to make up for what one didnt get that was ones birthright, asking the wrong people for it.

It is an oyster, with small shells clinging to its humped back. Sprawling and uneven, it has the irregularity of something growing. It looks rather like the house of a big family, pushing out one addition after another to hold its teeming life - here a sleeping porch for the children, and there a veranda for the play-pen; here a garage for the extra car and there a shed for the bicycles. It amuses me because it seems so much like my life at the moment, like most womens lives in the middle years of marriage. It is untidy, spread out in all directions, heavily encrusted with accumulations....

Only when one is connected to ones inner core is one connected to others. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be re-found through solitude.

# I saw the most beautiful cat today. It was sitting by the side of the road, its two front feet neatly and graciously together. Then it gravely swished around its tail to completely encircle itself. It was so fit and beautifully neat, that gesture, and so self-satisfied, so complacent.

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

After all, I dont see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood.

And then, some morning in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense—no—but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. One never knows what chance treasures these easy unconscious rollers may toss up, on the smooth white sand of the conscious mind; what perfectly rounded stone, what rare shell from the ocean floor. Perhaps a channeled whelk, a moon shell, or even an argonaut.

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.

Only in growth reform and change paradoxically enough is true security to be found.

It isnt for the moment you are stuck that you need courage but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.

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