The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.
Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distraction...What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive.
When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Marriage should, I think, always be a little bit hard and new and strange. It should be breaking your shell and going into another world, and a bigger one.
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.
I think best with a pencil in my hand.
# "I saw the most beautiful cat today. It was sitting by the side of the road, its two front feet neatly and graciously together. Then it gravely swished around its tail to completely encircle itself. It was so fit and beautifully neat, that gesture, and so self-satisfied, so complacent.
Woman must come of age by herself. This is the essence of 'coming of age'-to learn how to stand alone. She must learn not to depend on another, nor to feel she must prove her strength by competing with another. In the past, she has swung between these two opposite poles of dependence and competition, of Victorianism and Feminism. Both extremes throw her off balance; neither is the center, the true center of being a whole woman. She must find her true center alone. She must become whole.
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.
Nothing feeds the center of being so much as creative work. The curtain of mechanization has come down between the mind and the hand.
If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.
the final lesson of learning to be independent - widowhood ... is the hardest lesson of all.
For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.
There is no harvest for the heart alone. The seed of love must be eternally re-sown.
People talk about love as if it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers.
Flowers always have it - poise, completion, fulfillment, perfection . . .
In general, I feel, or I have come to feel, that the richest writing comes not from the people who dedicate themselves to writing alone. I know this is contradicted again and again but I continue to feel it. They don't, of course, write as much, or as fast, but I think it is riper and more satisfying when it does come. One of the difficulties of writing or doing any kind of creative work in America seems to me to be that we put such stress on production and material results. We put a time pressure and a mass pressure on creative work which are meaningless and infantile in that field.
Why is it that you can sometimes feel the reality of people more keenly through a letter than face to face?
Great problems that face the world today in both the private and the public sphere cannot be solved by women – or by men – alone. They can only be surmounted by men and women side by side.
God often used bitter experiences to make us better. Gold can be a helpful servant, but a cruel master.
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.
Love is a force.... It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product; it produces.
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.
Love is a force. . . . It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product. It is a power, like money, or steam or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it.
Flying was a very tangible freedom. In those days, it was beauty, adventure, discovery - the epitome of breaking into new worlds.
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