70 Quotes & Sayings By Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

You can’t just write and write and put things in a drawer. They wither without the warm sun of someone else’s appreciation. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living side by side, looking outward in the same direction. It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It is the wilderness inthe mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is astranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then onecannot touch others. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I believe that true identity is found .. . in creative activity springing from within. It is found, paradoxically, when one loses oneself. Woman can best refind herself in some kind of creative activity of her own. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

And so I miss the fertilization that might come from a contact. And for me--yes, I think I might as well admit it--fertilization does come a great deal from contacts. Why then do I avoid them--in a sort of false pride--shyness--timorous modesty? I used to be afraid of falling in love with people--or having them think I was--that I was chasing them (how ridiculous-- I am actually always running away! ) but now surely-- I should be mature enough to be over that. I am no longer afraid of falling in love, and the other false modesties should vanish. I cannot bear to think "par delicatesse j'ai perdu ma vie." (Because of discretion I have lost my life). Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The good past is so far away and the near past is so horrible and the future is so perilous, that the present has a chance to expand into a golden eternity of here and now. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partnersdo not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gayand swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart’s. To touch heavily would be to arrest the patternand freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no placehere for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Nowarm in arm, now face to face, now back to back–it does not matter which. Because they know theyare partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished byit. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

All living relationships are in process ofchange, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms. But there is no singlefixed form to express such a changing relationship. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distraction... What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Yesterday's fairy tale is today's fact. The magician is only one step ahead of his audience. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There comes a moment when the things one has written, even a traveler's memories, stand up and demand a justification. They require an explanation. They query, 'Who am I? What is my name? Why am I here? Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's own 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 one's own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's 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 one's 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 can't 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. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

..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.. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

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. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

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! . Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't 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 one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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 women's lives in the middle years of marriage. It is untidy, spread out in all directions, heavily encrusted with accumulations.. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

# "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. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

After all, I don't see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

It isn't for the moment you are stuck that you need courage but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

One must lose one's life in order to find it. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Duration is not a test of true or false. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

People "died" all the time.. Parts of them died when they made the wrong kinds of decisions-decisions against life. Sometimes they died bit by bit until finally they were just living corpses walking around. If you were perceptive you could see it in their eyes the fire had gone out. . you always knew when you made a decision against life.. The door clicked and you were safe inside- safe and dead. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

One can never pay in gratitude one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Purposeful giving is not as apt to deplete one's resources it belongs to that natural order of giving that seems to renew itself even in the act of depletion. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A simple enough pleasure surely to have breakfast alone with one's husband but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The fundamental magic of flying is a miracle that has nothing to do with any of its practical purposes - purposes of speed accessibility and convenience - and will not change as they change. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

One can get just as much exultation in losing oneself in a little thing as in a big thing. It is nice to think how one can be recklessly lost in a daisy. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life or contemplative life or saintly life. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day - like writing a poem or saying a prayer. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Life is a gift, given in trust - like a child. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Perhaps this is the most important thing for me to take back from beach-living: simply the memory that each cycle of the tide is valid each cycle of the wave is valid each cycle of a relationship is valid. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it. Anne Morrow Lindbergh