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.

Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships.

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

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

When the wedding march sounds the resolute approach, the clock no longer ticks, it tolls the hour. The figures in the aisle are no longer individuals, they symbolize the human race.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness.

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.

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

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

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.

America, which has the most glorious present still existing in the world today, hardly stops to enjoy it, in her insatiable appetite for the future.

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

To be deeply in love is, of course, a great liberating force.

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.

It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.

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

There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas.

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.

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