One can never pay in gratitude: one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

For to be a woman is to have interests and duties, raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The pattern of our lives is essentially circular. We must be open to all points of the compass; husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider’s web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes. How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives. How much we need, and how arduous of attainment is that steadiness preached in all rules for holy living. How desirable and how distant is the ideal of the contemplative, artist or saint — the inner inviolable core, the single eye.

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

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Solitude, says the moon shell. Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day.