Quotes by Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Page 5

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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Running
Wise
Baby
Circus
Multiplicity
Steady
Life Men Women
Balancing
Chair
Daily
Life Women Men
Pile
Tightrope
Warn
Wise Men
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Climbing
Light
Wind
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Art
Practice
Solitude
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Life
Faith
Love Is
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Children
Growing Up
People
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Mom
Order
Years
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Engagement
Rude
Shopping
Copy Quote
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."
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Eye
Frustration
Mother
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Magic
Views
Years
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Morning
Missing
Waiting
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Adventure
America
Artist
Copy Quote
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'.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Mistake
Prayer
Writing
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Dancer
Lying
Real
Copy Quote
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 / Author
Doors
Eye
Fire
Copy Quote
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!
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Climbing
Dark
Light
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Men
Moon
Taken
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Essence
Opposites
Past
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Beauty
Autumn
Beautiful
Flower
Copy Quote
... 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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Morning
Light
Moving
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Doubt
Growth
Pain
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Life
Peace
Spiritual
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Dream
Being Alone
Hero
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Beautiful
Fun
Humble
Copy Quote
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?
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Hands
Jewels
Lakes
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
War
Luxury
Spiritual
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Women
Home
Artist
Copy Quote
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.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh / Author
Stress
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote

Related Author Authors

Zig Ziglar
Author
Saturday, Nov 06, 1926
Wednesday, Nov 28, 2012
Wayne Dyer
Author
Friday, May 10, 1940
Saturday, Aug 29, 2015
Zz Packer
Author
Friday, Jan 12, 1973
Zsuzsanna Budapest
Author
Tuesday, Jan 30, 1940
Zona Gale
Author
Wednesday, Aug 26, 1874
Tuesday, Dec 27, 1938
Zoey Dean
Author
Zoe Weil
Author
Thursday, Jul 13, 1961
Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Author
Wednesday, May 11, 1927
Wednesday, Oct 08, 2014
Zick Rubin
Author
Zhang Xianliang
Author

Saturday, Sep 27, 2014
Zelda Popkin
Author
Tuesday, Jul 05, 1898
Wednesday, May 25, 1983
Ze'ev Jabotinsky
Author
Monday, Oct 18, 1880
Sunday, Aug 04, 1940
Ze'ev Chafets
Author
Zane Grey
Author
Wednesday, Jan 31, 1872
Monday, Oct 23, 1939
Zane
Author

View All Author Quotes

Top Authors

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Poet
Saturday, Aug 05, 1809
Thursday, Oct 06, 1892
William Blake
Poet
Monday, Nov 28, 1757
Sunday, Aug 12, 1827
Steven Wright
Comedian
Tuesday, Dec 06, 1955
Dr. Seuss
Writer
Wednesday, Mar 02, 1904
Tuesday, Sep 24, 1991
Kobe Bryant
Basketball Player
Wednesday, Aug 23, 1978
George Carlin
Comedian
Wednesday, May 12, 1937
Sunday, Jun 22, 2008
Pope Francis
Thursday, Dec 17, 1936
Dolly Parton
Singer-Songwriter
Saturday, Jan 19, 1946
Socrates
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
John Muir
Author
Saturday, Apr 21, 1838
Thursday, Dec 24, 1914
Billy Graham
Professional Wrestler
Monday, Jun 07, 1943
Oscar Wilde
Writer
Monday, Oct 16, 1854
Friday, Nov 30, 1900
Saint Augustine
Saint
Saturday, Nov 13, 0354
Wednesday, Aug 28, 0430
George Orwell
Novelist
Thursday, Jun 25, 1903
Saturday, Jan 21, 1950
Paulo Coelho
Lyricist
Sunday, Aug 24, 1947

View All Authors

Anne Morrow Lindbergh Quotes - Page 5

App & Tools

Related Author Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

App & Tools

Related Author Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page