Anne (In Search of Wonder) > Anne (In Search of Wonder)'s Quotes

“Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

“When you behold an aspect for whose constant gloom and frown you cannot account, whose unvarying cloud exasperates you by its apparent causelessness, be sure that there is a canker somewhere, and a canker not the less deeply corroding because concealed.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“So subtle is the atmosphere of opinion that it will make itself felt without words.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe

“How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him”
― John Piper

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
― Frederick Douglass

“He loved her. It was as simple and as complicated as that.”
― Pamela Aidan, These Three Remain

“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even 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. We leap at the flow of the tide 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, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

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 was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships 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, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“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.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“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, Gift from the Sea

“...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 cor 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

“With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls--woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“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.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can only collect a few. One moon shell is more impressive than three. There is only one moon in the sky.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“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.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“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.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“My Life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“It is the wilderness in
the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. 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.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“by and large,mothers and house wives are the only workers who do not have regular time off.They are the great vacationless class”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“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, Gift from the Sea

“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.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“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.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand, only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back -- it does not matter which because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.

The joy of such a pattern is...the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes... But how does one learn this technique of the dance? Why is it so difficult? What makes us hesitate and stumble? It is fear, I think, that makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or clutch greedily toward the next. [And fear] can only be exorcised by its opposite: love.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“The better part of social adeptness, I think, is keeping one's mouth firmly closed”
― Amy Lynn Green, Things We Didn't Say