Quotes by "Anne Morrow Lindbergh"

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.

It isn't for the moment you are stuck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

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.

One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.

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.

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.

The fundamental magic of flying is 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.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

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.

Woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me.

it takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeded.

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.

For Sayonara, literally translated, 'Since it must be so,' of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado 'Till we meet again,' any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father's good-by. It is - 'Go out in the world and do well, my son.' It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by ('God be with you') and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. 'You must not go - I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God's hand will over you' and even - underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible - 'I will be with you; I will watch you - always.' It is a mother's good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, 'Sayonara.

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.

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.

The beach is not a place to work; to read, write or to think.