Penny wondered, quite seriously, how a person was supposed to live with such things breaking one’s heart all day long.
“Now, instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke the space with continuous music, chatter and companionship to which we do not even listen. It is simply there to fill the vacuum. When the noise stops there is no inner music to take its place. We must re-learn to be alone.”
― Gift from the Sea: 70th Anniversary Edition
― Gift from the Sea: 70th Anniversary Edition
“Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.”
― Gift from the Sea: 70th Anniversary Edition
― Gift from the Sea: 70th Anniversary Edition
“How wonderful are islands! Islands in space, like this one I have come to, ringed about by miles of water, linked by no bridges, no cables, no telephones. An island from the world and the world's life. Islands in time, like this short vacation of mine. The past and the future are cut off; only the present remains. Existence in the present gives island living an extreme vividness and purity. One lives like a child or a saint in the immediacy of here and now. Every day, every act, is an island, washed by time and space, and has an island's completion. People, too, become like islands in such an atmosphere, self-contained, whole, serene; respecting other people's solitude, not intruding on their shores, standing back in reverence before the miracle of another individual.”
― Gift from the Sea
― Gift from the Sea
“The problem is not entirely in finding a room of one's own, the time alone, difficult and necessary as that is. The problem is more how to still the soul in the midst of its activities. In fact, the problem is how to feed the soul.”
― Gift from the Sea
― Gift from the Sea
“We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The interrelatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold. Or rather—for I believe the heart is infinite—modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry.”
― Gift from the Sea: 70th Anniversary Edition
― Gift from the Sea: 70th Anniversary Edition
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Melanie’s 2025 Year in Books
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