Quotes from Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. 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.

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.

If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.

Forsythia is pure joy. There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of sadness or even knowledge in forsythia. Pure, undiluted, untouched joy.

the final lesson of learning to be independent - widowhood ... is the hardest lesson of all.

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.

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

I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.

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.

I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.

Why is life speeded up so? Why are things so terribly, unbearably precious that you can't enjoy them but can only wait breathless in dread of their going?

The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many things; my background and childhood, my mind and its education, my conscience and its pressures, my heart and its desires.

I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others

To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.

The only real security in a relationship lies neither in looking back in nostalgia, nor forward in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now.

For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.

Duration is not a test of truth or falsehood.

When one is out of touch with oneself, one cannot touch others.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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