Top 226 Quotes & Sayings by Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Page 4

No new sect ever had humor; no disciples either, even the disciples of Christ.

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.

I want to be pure in heart -- but I like to wear my purple dress.

For the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication.

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?

the issue of war or peace is an issue that concerns not only experts on Foreign Affairs but every citizen of the United States.

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.

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

Frenchwomen just never look ungroomed, do they?

Cut asparagus at night - in desperation. When one is very tired one always does one more thing.

It is only framed in space that beauty blooms; only in space are events, and objects and people unique and significant and therefore beautiful.

But I want first of all- in fact, as an end to these other desires- to be at peace with myself.

I find the weight of air/Almost too great to bear.

Geniuses were like storms or cyclones, pulling everything into their path, sticks and stones and dust.

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.

Woman must be the pioneer in this turning inward for strength. In a sense, she has always been the pioneer.

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.

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.

For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another.

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.

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."

When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others, too.

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.

Packing is chiefly planning -- if it is

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.

... 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.

Fame is a kind of death because it arrests life around the person in the public eye.

Duration is not a test of truth or falsehood.

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.

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.

The nicest gifts are those left, nameless and quiet, unburdened with love, or vanity, or the desire for attention.

people talk about 'sex' as though it hopped about by itself, like a frog!

Why do progress and beauty have to be so opposed?

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!

Who is not afraid of pure space - that breathtaking empty space of an open door?

We must relearn to be alone.

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.

... 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.

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.

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.

... writing letters is thinking, just as talking to you is thinking.

For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well

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!

Woman can best refind herself by losing herself in some kind of creative activity of her own.

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.

For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms.