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Great Problems That Face The World Today In Both The Private And The Public Sphere Cannot Be Solved By Women – Or By Men – Alone. They Can Only Be Surmounted By Men And Women Side By Side.

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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Great Problems That Face

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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Great Problems That Face The World Today In Both The Private And The Public Sphere Cannot Be Solved By Women – Or By Men – Alone. They Can Only Be Surmounted By Men And Women Side By Side.

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More From Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Is There Anything As Horrible As Starting On A Trip? Once You're Off, That's All Right, But The Last Moments Are Earthquake And Convulsion, And The Feeling That You Are A Snail Being Pulled Off Your Rock.

To Be Deeply In Love Is, Of Course, A Great Liberating Force.

Prison Life Taught Him How Little One Can Get Along With, And What Extraordinary Spiritual Freedom And Peace Such Simplification Can Bring. I Remember Again, Ironically, That Today More Of Us In The World Have The Luxury Of Choice Between Simplicity And Complication Of Life. And For The Most Part, We, Who Could Choose Simplicity, Choose Complication. War, Prison, Survival Periods, Enforce A Form Of Simplicity On Us. The Monk And The Nun Choose It Of Their Own Free Will. But If One Accidentally Finds It, As I Have For A Few Days, One Finds Also The Serenity It Brings.

I Want To Be Pure In Heart -- But I Like To Wear My Purple Dress.

Lost Time Is Like A Run In A Stocking. It Always Gets Worse.

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!

For In Our Family An Experience Was Not Finished, Not Truly Experienced, Unless Written Down Or Shared With Another.

To Give Without Any Reward, Or Any Notice, Has A Special Quality Of Its Own.

It Is A Difficult Lesson To Learn Today-to Leave One's Friends And Family And Deliberately Practice The Art Of Solitude For An Hour Or A Day Or A Week. And Yet, Once It Is Done, 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.

For The Most Part, We, Who Could Choose Simplicity, Choose Complication.

God Often Used Bitter Experiences To Make Us Better. Gold Can Be A Helpful Servant, But A Cruel Master.

It Is The Striving After Perfection That Makes One An Artist. It Is The Sense That One Is Imperfect, Unfulfilled, Unfinished. One Attempts By A Superhuman Effort To Fill The Gap, To Leap Over It, To Finish It In Another Medium. And One Creates A Third And Separate Thing: 'adventure Rarely Reaches Its Predetermined End. Columbus Never Reached China. But He Discovered America.

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.

Love Is A Force. . . . It Is Not A Result; It Is A Cause. It Is Not A Product. It Is A Power, Like Money, Or Steam Or Electricity. It Is Valueless Unless You Can Give Something Else By Means Of It.

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.

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.

Certain Springs Are Tapped Only When You're Alone.

The World Has Different Owners At Sunrise... Even Your Own Garden Does Not Belong To You. Rabbits And Blackbirds Have The Lawns; A Tortoise-shell Cat Who Never Appears In Daytime Patrols The Brick Walls, And A Golden-tailed Pheasant Glints His Way Through The Iris Spears.

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 Punctuation Of Anniversaries Is Terrible, Like The Closing Of Doors, One After Another Between You And What You Want To Hold On To.

When You Love Someone You Do Not Love Them, All The Time, In The Exact Same Way, From Moment To Moment. It Is An Impossibility. It Is 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.

When You Love Someone

It Was A Magic Caused By The Collision Of Modern Methods And Old Ones; Modern History And Ancient; Accessibility And Isolation. And It Was A Magic Which Could Only Strike Spark About That Time. A Few Years Earlier, From The Point Of View Of Aircraft Alone, It Would Have Been Impossible To Reach These Places; A Few Later, And There Will Be No Such Isolation.

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.

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.

What A Crippling Art Writing Is, No Body To It, No Craft, Really. It's All In The Mind And You Never See It Or Feel It -- Only Sometimes Hear It. It Uses Only Such A Small Part Of Man. I Wish I Were A Sculptor.

One Cannot Collect All The Beautiful Shells On The Beach. One Can Collect Only A Few, And They Are More Beautiful If They Are Few.

And If Flying, Like A Glass-bottomed Bucket, Can Give You That Vision, That Seeing Eye, Which Peers Down On The Still World Below The Choppy Waves - It Will Always Remain Magic.

There Is No Aristocracy Of Grief. Grief Is A Great Leveler.

Woman Must Come Of Age By Herself... She Must Find Her True Center Alone.

In The Sheltered Simplicity Of The First Days After A Baby Is Born, One Sees Again The Magical Closed Circle, The Miraculous Sense Of Two People Existing Only For Each Other.

You Can’t Just Write And Write And Put Things In A Drawer. They Wither Without The Warm Sun Of Someone Else’s Appreciation.

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. Only When One Is Connected To One's Own Core, Is One Connected To Others. And For Me, The Core, The Inner Spring, Can Best Be Re-found Through Silence.

Geniuses Were Like Storms Or Cyclones, Pulling Everything Into Their Path, Sticks And Stones And Dust.

Grief Can't Be Shared. Everyone Carries It Alone. His Own Burden In His Own Way.

Only When A Tree Has Fallen Can You Take The Measure Of It. It Is The Same With A Man.

I Think One Must Do The Thing -- Whatever It Is (and It Changes From Time To Time) -- That Unites You To The Flowing Stream Of The World. At Any Price, One Must Do It First. Otherwise One Can Do Nothing, Nothing At All. One Is Out Of Touch, Out Of Grace.

I Feel We Are All Islands - In A Common Sea.

I Feel I Should Not Be ... So At The Mercy Of People's Regard. And Yet - It Is The Artist's Desire For Communication Too; Without The Answering Voice You Get So Numb; You Lose Faith In Your Powers To Communicate.

Flying Was A Very Tangible Freedom. In Those Days, It Was Beauty, Adventure, Discovery - The Epitome Of Breaking Into New Worlds.

The Nice Thing About Really Intelligent People Is That When You Talk With Them They Make You Feel Intelligent Too.

How Hard It Is To Have The Beautiful Interdependence Of Marriage And Yet Be Strong In Oneself Alone.

Interdependence

Why Is It That You Can Sometimes Feel The Reality Of People More Keenly Through A Letter Than Face To Face?

I Find The Weight Of Air/almost Too Great To Bear.

Woman Must Come Of Age By Herself. This Is The Essence Of 'coming Of Age'-to Learn How To Stand Alone. She Must Learn Not To Depend On Another, Nor To Feel She Must Prove Her Strength By Competing With Another. In The Past, She Has Swung Between These Two Opposite Poles Of Dependence And Competition, Of Victorianism And Feminism. Both Extremes Throw Her Off Balance; Neither Is The Center, The True Center Of Being A Whole Woman. She Must Find Her True Center Alone. She Must Become Whole.

Perhaps I Am A Bear, Or Some Hibernating Animal Underneath, For The Instinct To Be Half Asleep All Winter Is So Strong In Me.

It Isn't For The Moment You Are Struck That You Need Courage, But For That Long Uphill Climb Back To Sanity And Faith And Security.

Men Kick Friendship Around Like A Football, But It Doesn't Seem To Crack. Women Treat It Like Glass And It Goes To Pieces.

The Plane Seems Exultant Now, Even Arrogant. We Did It, We Did It! We're Up, Above You. We Were Dependant On You Just Now, Prisoners Fawning On You For Favors, For Wind And Light. But Now, We Are Free. We Are Up! We Are Off! Like Someone Singing Ecstatically, Climbing, Soaring- A Sustained Note Of Power And Joy.

Fame Is A Kind Of Death Because It Arrests Life Around The Person In The Public Eye. If One Is Recognized Everywhere, One Begins To Feel Like Medusa. People Stop Their Normal Life And Actions And Freeze Into Staring Manikins. "we Can Never Catch People Or Life Unawares," As I Wrote To My Mother, In An Outburst Of Frustration. "it Is Always Looking At Us."

I Am Beginning To Respect The Apathetic Days. Perhaps They're A Necessary Pause: Better To Give In To Them Than To Fight Them At Your Desk Hopelessly; Then You Lose Both The Day And Your Self-respect. Treat Them As Physical Phenomena -- Casually -- And Obey Them.

One Must Go Through Periods Of Numbness That Are Harder To Bear Than Grief.

I Should Like To Be A Full-time Mother And A Full-time Artist And A Full-time Wife-companion And Also A 'charming Woman' On The Side! And To Be Aware And Record It All. I Cannot Do It All. Something Must Go - Several Things Probably. The 'charming Woman' First!

Travelers Are Always Discoverers, Especially Those Who Travel By Air. There Are No Signposts In The Sky To Show A Man Has Passed That Way Before. There Are No Channels Marked. The Flier Breaks Each Second Into New Uncharted Seas.

Everything Today Has Been Heavy And Brown. Bring Me A Unicorn To Ride About The Town.

There Is No Sin Punished More Implacably By Nature Than The Sin Of Resistance To Change.

Nothing Feeds The Center Of Being So Much As Creative Work.

Cut Asparagus At Night - In Desperation. When One Is Very Tired One Always Does One More Thing.

Marriage Should, I Think, Always Be A Little Bit Hard And New And Strange. It Should Be Breaking Your Shell And Going Into Another World, And A Bigger One.

I Do Not Like Talking Casually To People - It Does Not Interest Me - And Most Of Them Are Unwilling To Talk At All Seriously.

... Writing Letters Is Thinking, Just As Talking To You Is Thinking.

The Bearing, Rearing, Feeding And Educating Of Children; The Running Of A House With Its Thousand Details; Human Relationships With Their Myriad Pulls - Women's Normal Occupations In General Run Counter To Creative Life, Or Contemplative Life, Or Saintly Life.

Contemplative Life

Rivers Perhaps Are The Only Physical Features Of The World That Are At Their Best From The Air.

America, Which Has The Most Glorious Present Still Existing In The World Today, Hardly Stops To Enjoy It, In Her Insatiable Appetite For The Future.

I Am Very Fond Of The Oyster Shell. It Is Humble And Awkward And Ugly. It Is Slate-colored And Unsymmetrical. Its Form Is Not Primarily Beautiful But Functional. I Make Fun Of Its Knobbiness. Sometimes I Resent Its Burdens And Excrescences. But Its Tireless Adaptability And Tenacity Draw My Astonished Admiration And Sometimes Even My Tears. And It Is Comfortable In Its Familiarity, Its Homeliness, Like Old Garden Gloves When Have Molded Themselves Perfectly To The Shape Of The Hand. I Do Not Like To Put It Down. I Will Not Want To Leave It.

Who Is Not Afraid Of Pure Space - That Breathtaking Empty Space Of An Open Door?

Woman Can Best Refind Herself By Losing Herself In Some Kind Of Creative Activity Of Her Own.

...the Only Continuity Possible In Life, As In Love, Is In Growth, In Fluidity - In Freedom. The Only Real Security Is... Living In The Present And Accepting It As It Is Now.

Woman Must Be The Pioneer In This Turning Inward For Strength. In A Sense, She Has Always Been The Pioneer.

The Ball Of Rumor And Criticism, Once It Starts Rolling, Is Difficult To Stop.

When One Is A Stranger To Oneself, Then One Is Estranged From Others, Too.

But I Want First Of All- In Fact, As An End To These Other Desires- To Be At Peace With Myself.

Nothing Feeds The Center Of Being So Much As Creative Work. The Curtain Of Mechanization Has Come Down Between The Mind And The Hand.

When The Heart Is Flooded With Love There Is No Room In It For Fear, For Doubt, For Hesitation.

A Note Of Music Gains Significance From The Silence On Either Side.

Life Is A Gift, Given In Trust - Like A Child.

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.

My Passport Photo Is One Of The Most Remarkable Photographs I Have Ever Seen- No Retouching, No Shadows, No Flattery-just Stark Me.

For Happiness One Needs Security, But Joy Can Spring Like A Flower Even From The Cliffs Of Despair.

The Collector Walks With Blinders On; He Sees Nothing But The Prize. In Fact, The Acquisitive Instinct Is Incompatible With True Appreciation Of Beauty.

Fame Separates You From Life.

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.

Packing Is Chiefly Planning -- If It Is

People Talk About 'sex' As Though It Hopped About By Itself, Like A Frog!

For Sleep, One Needs Endless Depths Of Blackness To Sink Into; Daylight Is Too Shallow, It Will Not Cover One.

... The Most Ordinary Everyday Living Is As Delicate, As Breath-taking, As Difficult, Takes As Terrific Physical And Mental Control And Effort, As Walking A Tightrope.

The Nicest Gifts Are Those Left, Nameless And Quiet, Unburdened With Love, Or Vanity, Or The Desire For Attention.

Go For A Short Walk In A Soft Rain - Lovely - So Many Wild Flowers Startling Me Through The Woods And A Lawn Sprinkled With Dandelions, Like A Night With Stars. And Through It All The Sound Of Soft Rain Like The Sound Of Innumerable Earthworms Stirring In The Ground.

Only Love Can Be Divided Endlessly And Still Not Diminish.

In General, I Feel, Or I Have Come To Feel, That The Richest Writing Comes Not From The People Who Dedicate Themselves To Writing Alone. I Know This Is Contradicted Again And Again But I Continue To Feel It. They Don't, Of Course, Write As Much, Or As Fast, But I Think It Is Riper And More Satisfying When It Does Come. One Of The Difficulties Of Writing Or Doing Any Kind Of Creative Work In America Seems To Me To Be That We Put Such Stress On Production And Material Results. We Put A Time Pressure And A Mass Pressure On Creative Work Which Are Meaningless And Infantile In That Field.

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.

If It Is A Woman's Function To Give, She Must Be Replenished, Too.

God May Want You To Be The Answer To Your Own Prayer.

... Once You Get Beyond The Crust Of The First Pang It Is All The Same And You Can Easily Bear It. It Is Just The Transition From Painlessness To Pain That Is So Terrible.

My Father Taught Me That A Bill Is Like A Crying Baby And Has To Be Attended To At Once.

Forsythia Is Pure Joy. There Is Not An Ounce, Not A Glimmer Of Sadness Or Even Knowledge In Forsythia. Pure, Undiluted, Untouched Joy.

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.

The Best Marriages, Like The Best Lives, Were Both Happy And Unhappy. There Was Even A Kind Of Necessary Tension, A Certain Tautness Between The Partners That Gave The Marriage Strength, Like The Tautness Of A Full Sail. You Went Forward On It.

It Is Terribly Amusing How Many Different Climates Of Feelings One Can Go Through In One Day.

By And Large, Mothers And Housewives Are The Only Workers Who Do Not Have Regular Time Off. They Are The Great Vacationless Class.

The Final Lesson Of Learning To Be Independent - Widowhood ... Is The Hardest Lesson Of All.

War Is A Thug's Game. The Thug Strikes First And Harder. He Doesn't Go By Rules And He Isn't Afraid Of Hurting People.

It Is Nice To Think How One Can Be Recklessly Lost In A Daisy!

My Life Cannot Implement In Action The Demands Of All The People To Whom My Heart Responds.

Only With Winter-patience Can We Bring The Deep-desired, Long-awaited Spring.

We Americans, With Our Terrific Emphasis On Youth, Action, And Material Success, Certainly Tend To Belittle The Afternoon Of Life And Even To Pretend It Never Comes. We Push The Clock Back And Try To Prolong The Morning, Over-reaching And Over-straining Ourselves In The Unnatural Effort. ... In Our Breathless Attempts We Often Miss The Flowering That Waits For Afternoon.

We Have So Little Faith In The Ebb And Flow Of Life, Of Love, Of Relationships. We Leap At The Flow Of Time And Resist In Terror Its Ebb. We Are Afraid It Will Never Return. We Insist On Permanency, On Duration, On Continuity; When The Only Continuity Possible In Life, As In Love, Is In Growth, In Fluidity - In Freedom.

Failures Aren't Failures If You Learn Something From Them.

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.

... Not Only Is Life Put In New Patterns From The Air, But It Is Somehow Arrested, Frozen Into Form. (the Leaping Hare Is Caught In A Marble Panel.) A Glaze Is Put Over Life. There Is No Flaw, No Crack In The Surface; A Still Reservoir, No Ripple On Its Face. Looking Down From The Air That Morning, I Felt That Stillness Rested Like A Light Over The Earth. The Waterfalls Seemed Frozen Solid; The Tops Of The Trees Were Still; The River Hardly Stirred, A Serpent Gently Moving Under Its Shimmering Skin.

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.

Good Communication Is Just As Stimulating As Black Coffee, And Just As Hard To Sleep After.

People Don't Want To Be Understood - I Mean Not Completely. It's Too Destructive. Then They Haven't Anything Left. They Don't Want Complete Sympathy Or Complete Understanding. They Want To Be Treated Carelessly And Taken For Granted Lots Of Times.

I Had The Feeling . . . That My Experience Was Very Different From Other People’s. (are We All Under This Illusion?)

Guys Kick Friendship All Over Just Like A Soccer, Nonetheless It Does Not Appear To Crack. Girls Deal With It Like Glass And It Goes To Items.

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.

I Must Try To Be Alone For Part Of Each Year...and Part Of Each Day...in Order To Keep My Core, My Center...women Must Be Still As The Axis Of A Wheel In The Midst Of Her Activities. She Must Be The Pioneer Of Achieving This Stillness, Not Only For Her Own Salvation, But For The Salvation Of Family Life, Of Society, Perhaps Even Of Our Civilization.

What Release To Write So That One Forgets Oneself, Forgets One's Companion, Forgets Where One Is Or What One Is Going To Do Next To Be Drenched In Sleep Or In The Sea. Pencils And Pads And Curling Blue Sheets Alive With Letters Heap Up On The Desk.

I Can Conceive Of 'falling In Love' Over And Over Again. But 'marriage,' This Richness Of Life Itself, I Cannot Conceive Of Having Again - Or With Anyone Else. In This Sense 'marriage' Seems To Me Indissoluble.

Falling In Love

Richness Of Life

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.

My Diaries Were Written Primarily, I Think, Not To Preserve The Experience But To Savor It, To Make It Even More Real, More Visible And Palpable, Than In Actual Life. For In Our Family An Experience Was Not Finished, Not Truly Experienced, Unless Written Down Or Shared With Another.

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.

For It Is Not Merely The Trivial Which Clutters Our Lives But The Important As Well

We Tend Not To Choose The Unknown, Which Might Be A Shock Or A Disappointment Or Simply A Little Difficult To Cope With. An Yet It Is The Unknown With All Its Disappointments And Surprises That Is The Most Enriching.

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.

I Believe That What Woman Resents Is Not So Much Giving Herself In Pieces As Giving Herself Purposelessly.

Can You Write A Book And Have Children At The Same Time? Yes, If You're Content To Do It Very Very Slowly.

Life Itself Is Always Pulling You Away From The Understanding Of Life.

It Takes As Much Courage To Have Tried And Failed As It Does To Have Tried And Succeeded.

The Fundamental Magic Of Flying, 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.

Beauty Cannot Disguise Nor Music Melt A Pain Undiagnosable But Felt.

One Learns First Of All In Beach Living The Art Of Shedding; How Little One Can Get Along With, Not How Much.

We Insist On Permanency, On Continuity, When The Only Continuity Possible Is In Growth, In Freedom, In The Sense That The Dancers Are Free, Barely Touching As They Pass But Partners In The Same Pattern. The Only Real Security In A Relationship Lies Neither In Looking Back In Nostalgia, Nor Forward With Dread Or Anticipation, But Living In The Present And Accepting The Relationship As It Is Now.

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.

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.

For It Is Only Framed In Space That Beauty Blooms. Only In Space Are Events And Objects And People Unique And Significant-and Therefore Beautiful. A Tree Has Significance If One Sees It Against The Empty Face Of Sky. A Note In Music Gains Significance From The Silences On Either Side. A Candle Flowers In The Space Of Night. Even Small And Casual Things Take On Significance If They Are Washed In Space, Like A Few Autumn Grasses In One Corner Of An Oriental Painting, The Rest Of The Page Bare.

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.

The World Has Been Forced To Its Knees. Unhappily, We Seldom Find Our Way There Without Being Beaten To It By Suffering.

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

Him That I Love, I Wish To Be Free -- Even From Me.

Woman's Normal Occupations In General Run Counter To Creative Life, Or Contemplative Life, Or Saintly Life.

Contemplative Life

Yesterday I Sat In A Field Of Violets For A Long Time Perfectly Still, Until I Really Sank Into It - Into The Rhythm Of The Place, I Mean - Then When I Got Up To Go Home I Couldn't Walk Quickly Or Evenly Because I Was Still In Time With The Field.

We Seem So Frightened Today Of Being Alone That We Never Let It Happen. Even If Family, Friends, And Movies Should Fail, There Is Still The Radio Or Televsion To Fill Up The Void... We Can Do Our Housework With Soap-opera Heroes At Our Side... Now Instead Of Planting Our Solitude With Our Own Dream Blossoms, We Choke The Space With Continuous Music, Chatter, And Companionship To Which We Do Not Even Listen. It Is Simply There To Fill The Vacuum. When The Noise Stops There Is No Inner Music To Take Its Place. We Must Re-learn To Be Alone.

Too Many People, Too Many Demands, Too Much To Do; Competent, Busy, Hurrying People - It Just Isn't Living At All.

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?

The Present Is Passed Over In The Race For The Future; The Here Is Neglected In Favor Of The There. Enjoy The Moment, Even If It Means Merely A Walk In The Country.

One Must Lose One's Life To Find It.

The Signs That Presage Growth, So Similar, It Seems To Me, To Those In Early Adolescence: Discontent, Restlessness, Doubt, Despair, Longing, Are Interpreted Falsely As Signs Of Decay. In Youth One Does Not As Often Misinterpret The Signs; One Accepts Them, Quite Rightly, As Growing Pains. One Takes Them Seriously, Listens To Them, Follows Where They Lead. ... But In The Middle Age, Because Of The False Assumption That It Is A Period Of Decline, One Interprets These Life-signs, Paradoxically, As Signs Of Approaching Death.

It's Funny How You Can Be Mad At Someone One Moment And Want To Hug Them The Next.

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.

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'.

We Are Always Bargaining With Our Feelings So That We Can Live From Day To Day.

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.

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 An Inner Harmony, Essentially Spiritual, Which Can Be Translated Into Outward Harmony.

For It Is Only Framed In Space That Beauty Blooms.

One Can Never Pay In Gratitude; One Can Only Pay 'in Kind' Somewhere Else In Life.

It Is Only Framed In Space That Beauty Blooms; Only In Space Are Events, And Objects And People Unique And Significant And Therefore Beautiful.

These Bright Roofs, These Steep Towers, These Jewel-lakes, These Skeins Of Railroad Line - All Spoke To Her And She Answered. She Was Glad They Were There. She Belonged To Them And They To Her. . . . She Had Not Lost It. She Was Touching It With Her Fingertips. This Was Flying: To Go Swiftly Over The Earth You Loved, Touching It Lightly With Your Fingertips, Holding The Railroads Lines In Your Hand To Guide You, Like A Skein Of Wool In A Spider-web Game - Like Following Ariadne's Thread Through The Minotaur's Maze, Where Would It Lead, Where?

How One Hates To Think Of Oneself As Alone. How One Avoids It. It Seems To Imply Rejection Or Unpopularity.

Great Problems That Face The World Today In Both The Private And The Public Sphere Cannot Be Solved By Women – Or By Men – Alone. They Can Only Be Surmounted By Men And Women Side By Side.

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.

What A Circus Act We Women Perform Every Day Of Our Lives. Look At Us. We Run A Tightrope Daily, Balancing A Pile Of Books On The Head. Baby-carriage, Parasol, Kitchen Chair, Still Under Control. Steady Now! This Is Not The Life Of Simplicity But The Life Of Multiplicity That The Wise Men Warn Us Of.

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. Only When One Is Connected To One's Own Core Is.

Loneliness And Solitude

Frenchwomen Just Never Look Ungroomed, Do They?

The Sea Does Not Reward Those Who Are Too Anxious, Too Greedy, Or Too Impatient. One Should Lie Empty, Open, Choiceless As A Beach - Waiting For A Gift From The Sea.

For Is It Not Possible That Middle Age Can Be Looked Upon As A Period Of Second Flowering, Second Growth, Even A Kind Of Second Adolescence? It Is True That Society In General Does Not Help One Accept This Interpretation Of The Second Half Of Life.

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.

And One Perfect Day Can Give Clues For A More Perfect Life.

We Walk Up The Beach Under The Stars. And When We Are Tired Of Walking, We Lie Flat On The Sand Under A Bowl Of Stars. We Feel Stretched, Expanded To Take In Their Compass. They Pour Into Us Until We Are Filled With Stars, Up To The Brim.

Go With The Pain, Let It Take You. Open Your Palms And Your Body To The Pain. It Comes In Waves Like The Tide And You Must Be Open As A Vessel Lying On The Beach, Letting It Fill You Up And Then, Retreating, Leaving You Empty And Clear.

The Issue Of War Or Peace Is An Issue That Concerns Not Only Experts On Foreign Affairs But Every Citizen Of The United States.

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.

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?

Duration Is Not A Test Of Truth Or Falsehood.

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. In The Small Circle Of The Home She Has Never Quite Forgotten The Particular Uniqueness Of Each Member Of The Family; The Spontaneity Of Now; The Vividness Of Here. This Is The Basic Substance Of Life. These Are The Individual Elements That Form The Bigger Entities Like Mass, Future, World. We May Neglect These Elements, But We Cannot Dispense With Them. They Are The Drops That Make Up The Stream. They Are The Essence Of Life Itself.

Why Do Progress And Beauty Have To Be So Opposed?

Only In Growth, Reform, And Change, Paradoxically Enough, Is True Security To Be Found.

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.

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.

Fame Is A Kind Of Death Because It Arrests Life Around The Person In The Public Eye.

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.

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.

The Wave Of The Future Is Coming And There Is No Fighting It.

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.

To Mention A Loved Object, A Person, Or A Place To Someone Else Is To Invest That Object With Reality.

If You Surrender Completely To The Moments As They Pass, You Live More Richly Those Moments.

Focus And Concentration

Certain Environments, Certain Modes Of Life, And 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 Is One Of Them.

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.

Love Is A Force.... It Is Not A Result; It Is A Cause. It Is Not A Product; It Produces.

Flowers Always Have It - Poise, Completion, Fulfillment, Perfection . . .

It Is Not Restful, It Is Not Possible To Talk Wholeheartedly To More Than One Person At A Time. You Can't Really Talk With A Person Unless You Surrender To Them, For The Moment (all Other Talk Is Futile). You Can't Surrender To More Than One Person A Moment.

I Think Best With A Pencil In My Hand.

If One Talks To More Than Four People, It Is An Audience; And One Cannot Really Think Or Exchange Thoughts With An Audience.

Perhaps Both Men And Women In America May Hunger, In Our Material, Outward, Active, Masculine Culture, For The Supposedly Feminine Qualities Of Heart, Mind And Spirit — Qualities Which Are Actually Neither Masculine Nor Feminine, But Simply Human Qualities That Have Been Neglected.

Only When One Is Connected To One's Own Core Is One Connected To Others, I Am Beginning To Discover. And, For Me, The Core, The Inner Spring, Can Best Be Refound Through Solitude.

These Bright Roofs, These Steep Towers, These Jewel-lakes, These Skeins Of Railroad Line - All Spoke To Her And She Answered. She Was Glad They Were There. She Belonged To Them And They To Her.

I Have Been Overcome By The Beauty And Richness Of Our Life Together, Those Early Mornings Setting Out, Those Evenings Gleaming With Rivers And Lakes Below Us, Still Holding The Last Light.

Women Need Solitude In Order To Find Again The True Essence Of Themselves.

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?

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.

Yesterday's Fairy Tale Is Today's Fact. The Magician Is Only One Step Ahead Of His Audience.

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