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.

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

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

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.

One can never pay in gratitude: one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life.

Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Life is a gift, given in trust - like a child.

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

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.

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.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

I feel we are all islands - in a common 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.

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

The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.

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.

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

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.

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.

One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life.

What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. Look at us. We run a tightrope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now! This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of.

Flying was a very tangible freedom. In those days, it was beauty, adventure, discovery the epitome of breaking into new worlds.

The fundamental magic of flying, a miracle that has nothing to do with any of its practical purposes purposes of speed, accessibility, and convenience and will not change as they change.

One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding how little one can get along with not how much.

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 beach is not a place to work to read write or to think.

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.

Good conversation is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.

Those fields of daisies we landed on and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us many days many nights of stars.

Flying was a very tangible freedom. In those days it was beauty adventure discovery the epitome of breaking into new worlds.

For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms.

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.

Men kick friendship around like a football but it doesnt seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.

War is a thugs game. The thug strikes first and harder. He doesnt go by rules and he isnt afraid of hurting people.

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