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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. And
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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a773c26
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These values are signposts toward another way of living: simplicity of living, as much as possible, to retain a true awareness of life; balance of physical, intellectual, and spiritual life; work without pressure; space for significance and beauty; time for solitude and sharing; closeness to nature to strengthen understanding and faith in the intermittency of life.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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d090ff3
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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.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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b55ea4e
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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 ego. Perhaps one can shed at this stage in life as one sheds in beach living; one's pride, one's false ambitions, one's mask, one's armor. Was that armor not put on to protect one from the competitive world? If one ceases to compete, does one need it? Perhaps one can at last in middle age..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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75180b3
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No man is an island," said John Donne. I feel we are all islands--in a common sea."
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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9b55083
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The only real security is not in owning or possessing, no in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. 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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relationships
love
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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e916916
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I shall ask into my shell only those friends with whom I can be completely honest. I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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f454049
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Clothes, first. Of course, one needs less in the sun. But one needs less anyway, one finds suddenly. One does not need a closet-full, only a small suitcase-full.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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88f896d
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How wonderful are islands! Islands in space, like this one I have come to, ringed about by miles of water, linked by no bridges, no cables, no telephones. An island from the world and the world's life. Islands in time, like this short vacation of mine. The past and the future are cut off; only the present remains. Existence in the present gives island living an extreme vividness and purity. One lives like a child or a saint in the immediacy..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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8628c88
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remind me that I must try to be alone for part of each year, even a week or a few days; and for part of each day, even for an hour or a few minutes in order to keep my core, my center, my island-quality. You will remind me that unless I keep the island-quality intact somewhere within me, I will have little to give my husband, my children, my friends or the world at large. You will remind me that woman must be still as the axis of a wheel in..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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244bfa4
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What has made the day so perfect ? To begin with , it is a pattern of freedom. It's setting has not been cramped in space or time. An island, curiously enough, gives a limitless feeling or both. Nor has the day been limited in kinds of activity. It has a natural balance of physical, intellectual and social life. It has an easy unforced rhythm. Work is not deformed by pressure. Relationship is not strangled by claims. Intimacy is tempered by..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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db17003
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For the natural selectivity of the island I will have to substitute a conscious selectivity based on another sense of values - a sense of values I have become more aware of here. Island precepts, I might call them if I could define them, signposts toward another way of living. Simplicity of living, as much as possible, to retain a true awareness of life. Balance of physical, intellectual and spiritual life. Work without pressure. Space for ..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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3d500ca
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I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly. What we fear is not so much that our energy may be leaking away through small outlets as that it may be going "down the drain." We do not see the results of our giving as concretely as man does in his work. In the job of home-keeping there is no raise from the boss, and seldom praise from others to show us we have hit the mark. Except ..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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b87f888
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I felt a kind of impersonal kinship with them and a joy in that kinship. Beauty of earth and sea and air meant more to me. I was in harmony with it, melted into the universe, lost in it, as one is lost in a canticle of praise, swelling from an unknown crowd in a cathedral. 'Praise ye the Lord, all ye fishes of the sea - all ye birds of the air - all ye children of men - Praise ye the Lord!' Yes, I felt closer to my fellow men too, even in m..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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94d1f90
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We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The interrelatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold. Or rather--for I believe the heart is infinite--modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can ..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, "May the outward and inward man be at one."
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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But 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 core 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 a..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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2da83e1
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Growth in awareness has always been painful [...] But it does lead to greater independence and, eventually, cooperation in action. For the enormous problems that face the world today, in both the private and public sphere, cannot be solved by women - and men - alone. They can only be surmounted by men and women side by side.
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cooperation
men-and-women-quote
awareness-quotes
men-and-women
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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046cd86
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Plotinus was preaching the dangers of multiplicity of the world back in the third century.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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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
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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3744d9f
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certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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81f481a
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Plotinus was preaching the dangers of multiplicity of the world back in the third century. Yet, the problem is particularly and essentially woman's. Distraction is, always has been, and probably always will be, inherent in woman's life.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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f820886
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I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly. What we fear is not so much our energy may be leaking away through small outlets as that it may be going "down the drain." We do not see the results of our giving as concretely as man does his work. In the job of home-keeping there is no raise from the boss, and seldom praise from others to show us we have hit the mark. Except for the ..
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motherhood
woman-s-character
woman-s-strength
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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6f2830f
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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. The more one gives, the more one has the give - like milk in the breast.
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giving-quotes
selflessness
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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cfdc88a
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One longs to explain, to be sure they understand, the people one loves.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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seems to me the most beautiful thing on earth, perhaps because it is unearthly, and the touch of God in us: the miracle of mercy, the unexpected, the arms of the prodigal son's father, the ravens bringing food in the night, the cup running over.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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0811793
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We have had three appalling weeks, the kind one hardly believes while one is going through it. And afterwards, as now, it seems quite unbelievable--except for the inexplicable weariness. Written down it sounds merely funny.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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a53ac5e
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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. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; whe..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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db6a0a9
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When each partner loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in return; when he only knows that he loves and is moving to its music--then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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Beautiful, fragile, fleeting, the sunrise shell; but not, for all that, illusory. Because it is not lasting, let us not fall into the cynic's trap and call it an illusion. Duration is not a test of true or false. The day of the dragon-fly or the night of the Saturnid moth is not invalid simply because that phase in its life cycle is brief. Validity need have no relation to time, to duration, to continuity. It is on another plane, judged by ..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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f1cecb8
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People are like that here. Strangers smile at you on the beach, come up and offer you a shell, for no reason, lightly, and then go by and leave you alone again. Nothing is demanded of you in payment, no social rite expected, no tie established. It was a gift, freely offered, freely taken, in mutual trust. People smile at you here, like children, sure that you will not rebuff them, that you will smile back. And you do, because you know it wi..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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425655c
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One comes in the end to realize that there is no permanent pure-relationship and there should not be. It is not even something to be desired. The pure relationship is limited, in space and in time. In its essence it implies exclusion. It excludes the rest of life, other relationships, other sides of personality, other responsibilities, other possibilities in the future. It excludes growth.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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e3212ea
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We all wish to be loved alone.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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5040061
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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.
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future
past
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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4fb2bde
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One must lose one's life to find it. Woman can best refind herself by losing herself in some kind of creative activity of her own.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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549dcd8
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People, too, become like islands in such an atmosphere, self-contained, whole and serene; respecting other people's solitude, not intruding on their shores, standing back in reverence before the miracle of another individual. 'No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands - in a common sea. We
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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0745540
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Modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry. [...] Our grandmothers, and even - with some scrambling - our mothers, lived in a circle small enough to let them implement in action most of the impulses of their hearts and minds. We were brought up in a tradition that has now become impossible, for we have extended our circle throughout space and time.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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5d9e3b8
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Because we cannot deal with the many as individuals, we sometimes try to simplify the many into an abstraction called the mass. Because we cannot deal with the complexity of the present, we often over-ride it and live in a simplified dream of the future. Because we cannot solve our own problems right here at home, we talk about problems out there in the world. An escape process goes on from the intolerable burden we have placed upon ourselv..
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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84770e1
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The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greed, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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8483243
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I begin to shed my Martha-like anxiety about many things. Washable slipcovers, faded and old--I hardly see them; I don't worry about the impression they make on other people. I am shedding pride.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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e2b7e26
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The wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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d7d801e
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Lost time was like a run in a stocking. It always got worse.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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eb5d6ad
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Dearly beloved -- late again!
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
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Him that I love, I wish to be Even from me.
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh |