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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.

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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When We Start At

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Is No Harvest For The Heart Alone. The Seed Of Love Must Be Eternally Re-sown.

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

So Many Things We Love Are You!

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Most Exhausting Thing You Can Do Is To Be Inauthentic.

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.

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

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.

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

Contemplative Life

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

For It Is Only Framed In Space That Beauty Blooms.

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

... 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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

Duration Is Not A Test Of Truth Or Falsehood.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Packing Is Chiefly Planning -- If It Is

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

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.

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?

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

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.

# "i Saw The Most Beautiful Cat Today. It Was Sitting By The Side Of The Road, Its Two Front Feet Neatly And Graciously Together. Then It Gravely Swished Around Its Tail To Completely Encircle Itself. It Was So Fit And Beautifully Neat, That Gesture, And So Self-satisfied, So Complacent.

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.

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."

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.

...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.

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

For Relationships, Too, Must Be Like Islands. One Must Accept Them For What They Are Here And Now, Within Their Limits - Islands Surrounded And Interrupted By The Sea, Continuously Visited And Abandoned By The Tides. One Must Accept The Serenity Of The Winged Life, Of Ebb And Flow, Of Intermittency.

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

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.

Those Fields Of Daisies We Landed On, And Dusty Fields And Desert Stretches. Memories Of Many Skies And Earths Beneath Us - Many Days, Many Nights Of Stars.

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!

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

Interdependence

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Fame Separates You From Life.

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.

Why Do Progress And Beauty Have To Be So Opposed?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Communication With Another Person -- Wasn't It The Realest Thing In Life?

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

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.

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

No New Sect Ever Had Humor; No Disciples Either, Even The Disciples Of Christ.

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

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.

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

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

Only Love Can Be Divided Endlessly And Still Not Diminish.

We Must Relearn To Be Alone.

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?

Certain Springs Are Tapped Only When You're Alone.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

... 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.

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

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?

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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'.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Frenchwomen Just Never Look Ungroomed, Do They?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

It Is Only In Solitude That I Ever Find My Own Core.

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.

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.

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

Focus And Concentration

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Travel Far, Pay No Fare... A Book Can Take You Anywhere.

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

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

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.

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

If One Is Estranged From Oneself, Then One Is Estranged From Others Too. If One Is Out Of Touch With Oneself, Then One Cannot Touch Others.

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

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 Is Being Insincere.

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

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