Quotes by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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.

Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.

Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace.

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

Most people, when they talk fast, are not giving their best.

Life is a collection of moments, not one single event.

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

Just as one cannot explain life itself, one cannot explain the creative act.

I believe that true identity is found in creative activity springing from within. It is found when one loses oneself.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves.

Go with the ebb and flow of life. Be creative and find your way around the obstacles.

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.

Every relationship seems simple at its start.

Do not wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy. It's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.

Channeling your hunger for what really matters brings peace.

Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge.

You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

You can't find peace by avoiding life.

When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment.

We simplify, simplify and then simplify again.

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

Unrest of spirit is a mark of life.

The punctuation of simple sentences and the natural pauses in conversation is what brings it to life.

Solitude is not a luxury but a necessity for those who care for the inner life.

Quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.

Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.

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

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Men kick friendship around like a football and it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.

Life is a gift, given in trust – like a child.

Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job.

Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties.

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers.

How hard it is to have the beautiful interdependence of marriage and yet be strong in oneself alone.

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

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

Each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of a relationship is valid.

Don't wish me happiness—I don't expect to be happy all the time. It's gotten beyond that somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor. I will need them all.

Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows he must be alone to create.

Being alone for the first time is like an experiment. What will you do? What will you discover? What new lands are you sailing into?

A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with—that's poverty—but how efficiently we can put first things first.

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.

Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish.

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.

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