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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.

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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People "died" All The

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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Why Do Progress And Beauty Have To Be So Opposed?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Duration Is Not A Test Of Truth Or Falsehood.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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!

When We Start At The Center Of Ourselves, We Discover Something Worthwhile Extending Toward The Periphery Of The Circle. We Find Again Some Of The Joy In The Now, Some Of The Peace In The Here, Some Of The Love In Me And Thee Which Go To Make Up The Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth.

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

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

Fame Separates You From Life.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Only Love Can Be Divided Endlessly And Still Not Diminish.

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.

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.

Frenchwomen Just Never Look Ungroomed, Do They?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

One Must Lose One's Life To Find It.

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

Total Freedom Is Never What One Imagines And, In Fact, Hardly Exists. It Comes As A Shock In Life To Learn That We Usually Only Exchange One Set Of Restrictions For Another. The Second Set, However, Is Self-chosen, And Therefore Easier To Accept.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 Most Exhausting Thing In Life Is Being Insincere.

... 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.

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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.

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.

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Splutter, Splutter. Yes - We're Off - We're Rising. But Why Start Off With An Engine Like That? But It Smooths Out Now, Like A Long Sigh, Like A Person Breathing Easily, Freely. Like Someone Singing Ecstatically, Climbing, Soaring - Sustained Note Of Power And Joy. We Turn From The Lights Of The City; We Pivot On A Dark Wing; We Roar Over The Earth. The Plane Seems Exultant Now, Even Arrogant. We Did It, We Did It!

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

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?

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

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.

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.

We Must Relearn To Be Alone.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

No American Can Understand The Need For Time -- That Is, Simply Space To Breathe. If You Have Ten Minutes To Spare You Should Jam That Full Instead Of Leaving It -- As Space Around Your Next Ten Minutes. How Can Anything Ripen Without Those 'empty' Ten Minutes?

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.

Ideally, Both Members Of A Couple In Love Free Each Other To New And Different Worlds.

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

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.

To Me There Is Something Completely And Satisfyingly Restful In That Stretch Of Sea And Sand, Sea And Sand And Sky - Complete Peace, Complete Fulfillment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I Must Write It All Out, At Any Cost. Writing Is Thinking. It Is More Than Living, For It Is Being Conscious Of Living.

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