Quotes from Gift from the Sea

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

“Don't wish me happiness
I don't expect to be happy all the time...
It's gotton beyond that somehow.
Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
I will need them all.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from Gift from the Sea

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

“Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from 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, quote from Gift from the Sea

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

“Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it 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.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from 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, quote from Gift from the Sea

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

“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, quote from Gift from the Sea

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

“I want first of all... 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. I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, "May the outward and inward man be one." 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, quote from Gift from the Sea

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

“The beach is not a place to work; to read, write or to think.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from Gift from the Sea

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

“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, quote from Gift from the Sea

“Woman must come of age by herself...
She must find her true center alone.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from 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, quote from Gift from the Sea

“Out of the welter of life, a few people are selected for us by the accident of temporary confinement in the same circle. We never would have chosen these neighbors; life chose them for us. But thrown together on this island of living, we stretch to understand each other and are invigorated by the stretching. The difficulty with big city environment is that if we select—and we must in order to live and breathe and work in such crowded conditions—we tend to select people like ourselves, a very monotonous diet. All hors d’oeuvres and no meat; or all sweets and no vegetables, depending on the kind of people we are. But however much the diet may differ between us, one thing is fairly certain: we usually select the known, seldom the strange. We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from 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, quote from Gift from the Sea

“For life today in America is based on the premise of ever-widening circles of contact and communication. It involves not only family demands, but community demands, national demands, international demands on the good citizen, through social and cultural pressures, through newspapers, magazines, radio programs, political drives, charitable appeals, and so on. My mind reels in it, What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the trapeze artist to shame. Look at us. We run a tight rope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now!”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from Gift from the Sea

“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, quote from Gift from the Sea

“Perhaps both men and women in America may hunger, in our material, outward, active, masculine culture, for the supposedly feminine qualities of heart, mind and spirit--qualities which are actually neither masculine nor feminine, but simply human qualities that have been neglected. It is growth along these lines that will make us whole, and will enable the individual to become world to himself.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from Gift from the Sea

“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, quote from Gift from the Sea

“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, quote from Gift from the Sea

“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, quote from Gift from the Sea

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

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