Quotes from Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone, his own burden, his own way.

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 a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!

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.

When the heart is flooded with love there is no room in it for fear, for doubt, for hesitation.

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.

One writes not to be read but to breathe...one writes to think, to pray, to analyze. One writes to clear one's mind, to dissipate one's fears, to face one's doubts, to look at one's mistakes--in order to retrieve them. One writes to capture and crystallize one's joy, but also to disperse one's gloom. Like prayer--you go to it in sorrow more than joy, for help, a road back to 'grace'. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh (War Within and Without: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh 1939-1944)

One learns to accept the fact that no permanent return is possible to an old form of relationship; and, more deeply still, that there is no holding of a relationship to a single form. This is not tragedy but part of the ever-recurrent miracle of life and growth.

Everything today has been heavy and brown. Bring me a Unicorn to ride about the town.

I sometimes think that perhaps our minds are too weak to grasp joy or sorrow except in small things...In the big things joy and sorrow are just alike - overwhelming. At least, we only get them bit by bit, in tiny flashes - in waves - that our minds can't stand for very long. p 199

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.

I want to be pure in heart -- but I like to wear my purple dress.

I promise to respect and protect your aloneness, knowing that everything created must have its period of darkness: child and bulb, poem and personality. I promise not to pry into your loneliness, never to tear at the bud with frightened fingers to make sure there is a flower inside. I believe in the flower.

Love does not consist in gazing at each other (one perfect sunrise gazing at another!) but in looking outward together in the same direction.

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

Every step, even a tentative one, counts.

The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. Godlike he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis completely expressible in words.

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

One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.

Can one make the future a substitute for the present? And what guarantee have we that the future will be any better if we neglect the present?

There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.

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.

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

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

I feel a hunger now- a real hunger-for letting the pool still itself & seeing the reflections.