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

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

Understanding the Quote: "the punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one..."

This quote by Anne Morrow Lindbergh reflects deeply on the theme of anniversary. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Anniversary, Doors, Want, 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 anniversary and doors. 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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Anniversary
Doors
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Ebb And Flow
When You Love Someone
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.
Men
World
Today
One Must Lose One's Life To Find It.
Order
Loses
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.
Girl
Soccer
Glasses
Marriage Is Tough, Because It Is Woven Of All These Various Elements, The Weak And The Strong. "in Love-ness" Is Fragile For It Is Woven Only With The Gossamer Threads Of Beauty. It Seems To Me Absurd To Talk About "happy" And "unhappy" Marriages.
Strong
Unhappy
Woven
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.
Heart
Men
America
It Takes As Much Courage To Have Tried And Failed As It Does To Have Tried And Succeeded.
Inspirational
Courage
Recovery
Good Communication Is Just As Stimulating As Black Coffee, And Just As Hard To Sleep After.
Coffee
Communication
Memorable
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
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
We Are Always Bargaining With Our Feelings So That We Can Live From Day To Day.
Feelings
Bargaining
Day To Day
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.
Beach
Stars
Lying
How Hard It Is To Have The Beautiful Interdependence Of Marriage And Yet Be Strong In Oneself Alone.
Beautiful
Strong
Interdependence
The Nice Thing About Really Intelligent People Is That When You Talk With Them They Make You Feel Intelligent Too.
Nice
Intelligent
People
People Talk About 'sex' As Though It Hopped About By Itself, Like A Frog!
Sex
People
Frogs
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.
Eye
Glasses
Giving
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
Why Do Progress And Beauty Have To Be So Opposed?
Progress
Nothing Feeds The Center Of Being So Much As Creative Work. The Curtain Of Mechanization Has Come Down Between The Mind And The Hand.
Hands
Creative
Mind
The Beach Is Not The Place To Work; To Read, Write Or Think.
Beach
Writing
Thinking
I Find The Weight Of Air/almost Too Great To Bear.
Grief
Air
Weight
Love Is A Force.... It Is Not A Result; It Is A Cause. It Is Not A Product; It Produces.
Love Is
Causes
Results
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
Frenchwomen Just Never Look Ungroomed, Do They?
Looks
France
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.
Marriage
Space
Woven
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
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.
Communication
Moments
Surrender
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.
Spiritual
War
Luxury
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.
Spring
Order
Essence
People Talk About Love As If It Were Something You Could Give, Like An Armful Of Flowers.
Love
Flower
People
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?
Space
Leaving
Needs
Him That I Love, I Wish To Be Free -- Even From Me.
Love
Inspirational
Dream
Geniuses Were Like Storms Or Cyclones, Pulling Everything Into Their Path, Sticks And Stones And Dust.
Dust
Storm
Cyclones
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.
America
World
Today
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
...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.
Love
Real
Growth
Communication With Another Person -- Wasn't It The Realest Thing In Life?
Communication
Things In Life
Persons
If One Talks To More Than Four People, It Is An Audience; And One Cannot Really Think Or Exchange Thoughts With An Audience.
Thinking
People
Four
The Wave Of The Future Is Coming And There Is No Fighting It.
Fighting
Wave
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.
Mom
Mother
Baby
Grief Can't Be Shared. Everyone Carries It Alone. His Own Burden In His Own Way.
Grief
Grieving
Losing Someone
No One, It Has Been Said, Will Ever Look At The Moon In The Same Way Again. More Significantly Can One Say That No One Will Ever Look At The Earth In The Same Way. Man Had To Free Himself From Earth To Perceive Both Its Diminutive Place In A Solar System And Its Inestimable Value As A Life -fostering Planet. As Earthmen, We May Have Taken Another Step Into Adulthood. We Can See Our Planet Earth With Detachment, With Tenderness, With Some Shame And Pity, But At Last Also With Love.
Taken
Moon
Men
... 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.
Effort
Everyday
Ordinary
By And Large, Mothers And Housewives Are The Only Workers Who Do Not Have Regular Time Off. They Are The Great Vacationless Class.
Mothers Day
Mom
Motherhood
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?
Lakes
Hands
Jewels
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
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.
Spring
Being Alone
Silence
It Is Terribly Amusing How Many Different Climates Of Feelings One Can Go Through In One Day.
Witty
Feelings
One Day
I Must Write It All Out, At Any Cost. Writing Is Thinking. It Is More Than Living, For It Is Being Conscious Of Living.
Education
Powerful
Writing
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."
Mother
Eye
Frustration
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.
Strength
Courage
Wish
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.
Happiness
Disappointment
Littles
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.
Life
Faith
Love Is
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!
Practice
Civilization
Solitude
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.
Women
Home
Artist
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
The World Has Been Forced To Its Knees. Unhappily, We Seldom Find Our Way There Without Being Beaten To It By Suffering.
Suffering
World
Knees
Life Is A Gift, Given In Trust - Like A Child.
Life
Trust
Children
God Often Used Bitter Experiences To Make Us Better. Gold Can Be A Helpful Servant, But A Cruel Master.
Gold
Helpful
Bitter
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.
Art
Practice
Solitude
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
Woman's Normal Occupations In General Run Counter To Creative Life, Or Contemplative Life, Or Saintly Life.
Running
Women
Contemplative Life
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.
Airplane
Men
Sea
It's Funny How You Can Be Mad At Someone One Moment And Want To Hug Them The Next.
Mad At Someone
Hug
Want
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.
Love
Inspirational
Motivational
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