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People Talk About Love As If It Were Something You Could Give, Like An Armful Of Flowers.
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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People Talk About Love

Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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People Talk About Love As If It Were Something You Could Give, Like An Armful Of Flowers.

Understanding the Quote: "people talk about love as if it were something you could give,..."

This quote by Anne Morrow Lindbergh reflects deeply on the theme of love. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Love, Flower, People, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Anne Morrow Lindbergh interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Anne Morrow Lindbergh is celebrated for insightful thoughts on love and flower. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Love
Flower
People
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Grief
Aristocracy
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.
Patience
Beach
Nature
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.
Time
Nice
Thinking
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.
Real
Lying
Dancer
... Writing Letters Is Thinking, Just As Talking To You Is Thinking.
Writing
Thinking
Talking
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.
Light
Climbing
Wind
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.
Wedding
Race
Sound
One Can Never Pay In Gratitude; One Can Only Pay 'in Kind' Somewhere Else In Life.
Motivational
Thank You
Gratitude
But I Want First Of All- In Fact, As An End To These Other Desires- To Be At Peace With Myself.
Peace
Desire
Want
Why Do Progress And Beauty Have To Be So Opposed?
Progress
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.
Simplicity
May
Facts
God Often Used Bitter Experiences To Make Us Better. Gold Can Be A Helpful Servant, But A Cruel Master.
Gold
Helpful
Bitter
Women Need Solitude In Order To Find Again The True Essence Of Themselves.
Women
Order
Essence
When The Heart Is Flooded With Love There Is No Room In It For Fear, For Doubt, For Hesitation.
Inspirational
Heart
Doubt
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.
Beach
Memories
Important
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.
Shopping
Rude
Engagement
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.
Eye
Doors
Fire
I Had The Feeling . . . That My Experience Was Very Different From Other People’s. (are We All Under This Illusion?)
People
Feelings
Different
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
Thinking
Long
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.
Life
Relationship
Real
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.
Dream
Hero
Being Alone
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.
Life
Spiritual
Peace
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.
Views
Years
Magic
It Is Only Framed In Space That Beauty Blooms; Only In Space Are Events, And Objects And People Unique And Significant And Therefore Beautiful.
Beautiful
Unique
Space
It Is Terribly Amusing How Many Different Climates Of Feelings One Can Go Through In One Day.
Witty
Feelings
One Day
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.
Morning
Waiting
Missing
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.
Wise
Running
Baby
Life Itself Is Always Pulling You Away From The Understanding Of Life.
Understanding
Pulling
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.
Real
Thinking
Diaries
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.
Stress
Writing
Thinking
Failures Aren't Failures If You Learn Something From Them.
Failure
Ifs
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
Seems
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.
Stars
Communication
Night
Fame Is A Kind Of Death Because It Arrests Life Around The Person In The Public Eye.
Eye
Kind
Fame
Ideally, Both Members Of A Couple In Love Free Each Other To New And Different Worlds.
Inspirational
Couple
Greatest Love
I Find The Weight Of Air/almost Too Great To Bear.
Grief
Air
Weight
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.
Courage
Long
Uphill Climbs
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.
Unhappy
Maid Of Honor
Kind
For Sleep, One Needs Endless Depths Of Blackness To Sink Into; Daylight Is Too Shallow, It Will Not Cover One.
Sleep
Depth
Needs
When I Cannot Write A Poem, I Bake Biscuits And Feel Just As Pleased.
Writing
Feels Just
Biscuits
The Most Exhausting Thing In Life Is Being Insincere.
Life
Being Yourself
Just Being
Only With Winter-patience Can We Bring The Deep-desired, Long-awaited Spring.
Spring
Winter
Long
Rivers Perhaps Are The Only Physical Features Of The World That Are At Their Best From The Air.
Air
Rivers
World
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.
Country
Mean
Race
When One Is A Stranger To Oneself, Then One Is Estranged From Others, Too.
Self Esteem
Self Respect
Stranger
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.
Pain
Doubt
Growth
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.
Life
Learning
Self
I Believe That What Woman Resents Is Not So Much Giving Herself In Pieces As Giving Herself Purposelessly.
Women
Believe
Giving
Fame Separates You From Life.
Fame
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.
Thinking
Grace
World
One Learns First Of All In Beach Living The Art Of Shedding; How Little One Can Get Along With, Not How Much.
Beach
Art
Ocean
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.
Love
Mean
Giving
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.
Inspirational
Order
Giving
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?
Guarantees
Neglect
Substitutes
For In Our Family An Experience Was Not Finished, Not Truly Experienced, Unless Written Down Or Shared With Another.
Diaries
Down And
Our Family
The Issue Of War Or Peace Is An Issue That Concerns Not Only Experts On Foreign Affairs But Every Citizen Of The United States.
War
Issues
United States
For The Most Part, We, Who Could Choose Simplicity, Choose Complication.
Life
Simplicity
Clutter
To Be Deeply In Love Is, Of Course, A Great Liberating Force.
Love Is
Deeply In Love
Force
My Passport Photo Is One Of The Most Remarkable Photographs I Have Ever Seen- No Retouching, No Shadows, No Flattery-just Stark Me.
Photography
Women
Shadow
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.
Nature
Selfish
Years
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.
Miracle
Flying
Magic
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.
Fighting
Self
Giving
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