Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow

American Writer and Pioneering Aviator, Author of Gifts of 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."

"One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach, one can collect only a few."

"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."

"A little appreciation seems to me even more insidious than a little learning. It taints everything it touches and it touches everything, just the veneer of appreciation."

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

"There is no sin punished more implacably by nature than the sin of resistance to change."

"Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone, his own burden, his own way."

"There is no harvest for the heart alone; the seed of love must be eternally resown."

"The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. God-like, he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words; whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis, completely expressible in words."

"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."

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

"The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize. In fact, the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty."

"The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his own vanity. Godlike, he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words."

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

"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."

"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… My life… lacks this quality of significance and therefore beauty, because there is so little empty space. The space is scribbled on; the time has been filled. There are so few empty pages in my engagement pad, or empty hours in the day, or empty rooms in my life in which to stand alone and find myself. Too many activities, and people, and things. Too many worthy activities, valuable things, and interesting people. For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well. We can have a surfeit of treasures – an excess of shells, where one or two would be significant."

"One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach."

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

"If you let yourself be absorbed completely, if you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments."