Gift from the Sea (RR)

by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Started: 26 September 2007
Finished: 2 October 2007


There is so much I'd like to say about this book, but I think it's best to just let this marvelous lady speak for herself. Some of my--and other's--favorite quotes include the following...

'After all, I don't see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood.'

'By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.'

'Don't 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-I will need them all.'

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

'For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.'

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

'Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.'

'I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.'

'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.'

'I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.'

'I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light.'

'I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.'

'If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.'

'It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.'

'Life is a gift, given in trust - like a child.'

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

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

'One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.'

'The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.'

'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 it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now.'

'The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.'

'The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.'

'The wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it.'

'To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.'

To be able to write like that...Wow! Give yourself a treat! Give yourself 'Gift from the Sea'!

*****