There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded … - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

" "

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least in one's own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured. And there is another personal satisfaction: that of the people who like to recount their adventures, the diary-keepers, the story-tellers, the letter-writers, a strange race of people who feel half cheated of an experience unless it is retold. It does not really exist until it is put into words. As though a little doubting or dull, they could not see it until it is repeated. For, paradoxically enough, the more unreal an experience becomes - translated from real action into unreal words, dead symbols for life itself - the more vivid it grows. Not only does it seem more vivid, but its essential core becomes clearer. One says excitedly to an audience, 'Do you see - I can't tell you how strange it was - we all of us felt...' although actually, at the time of incident, one was not conscious of such a feeling, and only became so in the retelling. It is as inexplicable as looking all afternoon at a gray stone of a beach, and not realizing, until one tries to put it on canvas, that is in reality bright blue.

English
Collect this quote

About Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (22 June 1906 – 7 February 2001), born Anne Spencer Morrow, was a pioneering American aviator, and the wife of Charles Lindbergh

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Anne Spencer Morrow
Alternative Names: Anne Lindbergh Anne Morrow Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh Anne Spencer Lindbergh

Try QuoteGPT

Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Shorter versions of this quote

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's own experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least, in one's own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured.

Additional quotes by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It is the wilderness in
the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is a
stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one
cannot touch others.

I want to write — I want to write — I want to write and never never never will. I know it and I am so unhappy and it seems as though nothing else mattered. Whatever I'm doing, it's always there, an ultimate longing there saying, "Write this — write that — write —" and I can't. Lack ability, time, strength, and duration of vision. I wish someone would tell me brutally, "You can never write anything. Take up home gardening!"

Go Premium

Support Quotewise while enjoying an ad-free experience and premium features.

View Plans
A woman was bargaining with the gardener for a piece of vine, half as big as her finger, for her miniature Japanese garden. It was just what she wanted to climb up the stone in her dish. I looked with wonder on the Japanese appreciation of all small things in nature. Is it because their country, beautifully and theatrically mountainous, hardly ever allows a long vista, letting them always see things at close range? Or have her strange and lovely mists some part in teaching them to see, falling often like a backdrop behind a single pine, separating it from the rest of the world? Or have the Japanese, from generations spent in one-story paper houses, learned a language, an alphabet of beauty in nature, that we, in our houses of brick and stone, have shut out? Or is it, again, only because they are always artists and see more than we do?

If only I could stay here long enough, I would learn to see too. And after minutely watching the surface of things I would learn to see below the surface. I would see the essence of a thing.

Loading...