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8235477
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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 wh..
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shells
waking-life
beach
chance
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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709d4a8
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Every step, even a tentative one, counts.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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d44c139
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Tragedy is the common lot of man. 'So many people have lost children' I remind myself. pp 178-179 This tragedy is such an inextricable part of my story that it cannot be left out of an honest record. Suffering - no matter how multiplied - is always individual. p 179
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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e07c6f4
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There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.
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simplification
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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ce5984f
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remind me that woman must be still as the axis of a wheel in the midst of her activities; that she must be the pioneer in achieving this stillness, not only for her own salvation, but for the salvation of family life, of society, perhaps even of our civilization.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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676728c
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One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach--waiting for a gift from the sea.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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a5ae69a
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Love does not consist in gazing at each other (one perfect sunrise gazing at another!) but in looking outward together in the same direction.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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1438ae0
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Here the bonds of marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, ..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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5af6b74
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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..
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work
rest
journal
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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a6f4b5c
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It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.
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solitude
space
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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1187b58
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The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer, to work out his thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves: that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships. She must find that inner stillness which Charles Morgan describes as 'the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so ..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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1a1768f
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Every relationship seems simple at its start. Two people listening to each other, two shells meeting each other, making one world between them. There are no others in the perfect unity of that instant, no other people or things or interests. It is free of ties or claims, unburdened by responsibilities, by worry about the future or debts to the past. And then how swiftly, how inevitably the perfect unity is invaded; the relationship changes;..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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da82568
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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.
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travel
writing
memoir
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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191ad46
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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.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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684bc62
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I feel we are all islands-in a common sea. We are all, in the last analysis, alone. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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c4d14f1
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Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. For relationships too must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits -- islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continually visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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ea01b7d
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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..
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family-relationships
motherhood
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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f786224
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All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms. But there is no single fixed form to express such a changing relationship.
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relationship
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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4396d97
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Milky and opaque, it has the pinkish bloom of the sky on a summer evening, ripening to rain.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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46a2e0c
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Woman must come of age by herself. This is the essence of "coming of age" -to learn how to stand alone." --
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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6fc690d
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With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls--woman's normal occupations in general run ..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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30c251f
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My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds. I cannot marry all of them, or bear them all as children, or care for them all as I would my parents in illness or old age. Are not the here, the now, the individual and her relationships the casualties of modern life? The present is passed over in the race for the future, the here is neglected in favor of the there, and the individual is dwarfed by ..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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c678b89
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But the bond--the bond of romantic love is something else. It has so little to do with propinquity or habit or space or time or life itself. It leaps across all of them, like a rainbow--or a glance.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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5b59846
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Why do progress and beauty have to be so opposed? ; 75 Also, as in war, the case, like a great bubbling cauldron of life itself, threw up both good and evil. Greed, madness, cruelty and indifference were countered by goodness, devotion, self-sacrifice, and courage. p 178
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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9b0805e
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Eternally, woman spills herself away in driblets to the thirsty, seldom being allowed the time, the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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8664d0c
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not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of. It leads not to unification but to fragmentation. It does not bring grace; it destroys the soul.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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497cb00
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It is hard to recognize, or even to describe, but I think this freedom is the real reason the book continues to be so well loved and so well read after all these years. I am talking about the freedom that comes from choosing to remain open, as my mother did, to life itself, whatever it may bring: joys, sorrows, triumphs, failures, suffering, comfort, and certainly, always, change.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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2d990c4
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The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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b84edd5
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the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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b1aab11
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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?
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travel-writing
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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817076b
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When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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b95794c
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The desire forcontinuity of being-loved-alone seems to me "the error bred in the bone" of man. For "there is no one-and-only, as a friend of mine once said in a similar discussion, "there are just one-and-only moments."
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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99701e9
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The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone. How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for 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..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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97afcd2
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We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching. In so many ways this
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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9ca833e
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I walked far down the beach, soothed by the rhythm of the waves, the sun on my bare back and legs, the wind and mist from the spray on my hair.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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4ac7d3c
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Charles Morgan describes as "the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still." --
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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1914a5f
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I had the feeling, when the thoughts first clarified on paper, that my experience was very different from other people's. (Are we all under this illusion?)
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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af1f311
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Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach--waiting for a gift from the sea.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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d9df290
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It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger.
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loneliness
detachment
lost
wilderness
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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5219345
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what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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85997f8
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A good relationship has a pattern like a dance ... The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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924f858
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A day out of season, stopping the monotonous count of summer days. Stopping, too, one's own summer routine, so that, looking out on the gray skies, one says not only, 'What time of year is it?' but, 'What time of life am I in? Where am I? What am I doing?
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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43b7aaa
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When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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f90fa82
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Purposeful giving is not as apt to deplete one's resources; it belonds to that natural order of giving that seems to renew iself even in the act of depletion. The more one gives, the more one has to give - like milk in the breast... Even purposeful giving must have some source that refills it. The milk in the breast must be replenished by food taken into the body. If it is [our] function to give, [we] must be replenished too. But how? Every..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |