Moments when the original 'poet' in each of us created the outside world for us, by finding the familiar in the unfamiliar, are perhaps forgotten by most people; or else they are guarded in some secret place of memory because they were too much like visitations by the gods to be mixed with everyday thinking.

Marion Milner

Categorized in : Thinking Memories Secret Places

I began to have an idea of my life, not as slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know.

Marion Milner

achievement discovery ideas

I used to worry about what life was for - now being alive seems sufficient reason.

Marion Milner

alive worry life

Happiness not only needs no justification, but it is also the only final test of whether what I am doing is right for me. Only of course happiness is not the same as pleasure; it includes the pain of losing as well as the pleasure of finding.

Marion Milner

finals pain happiness

There seemed to be endless obstacles - it seemed that the root cause of them all was fear.

Marion Milner

obstacles causes roots

Perhaps if one really knew when one was happy one would know the things that were necessary in one's life.

Marion Milner

ifs knows

I want to feel myself part of things, of the great drift and swirl: not cut off, missing things, like being sent to bed early as a child, the blinds being drawn while the sun and cheerful voices came through the chink from the garden.

Marion Milner

cutting garden children

It's weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them.

Marion Milner

weak goes-on trying

The aim of the painting is that the eye should find out what it likes.

Marion Milner

painting likes eye

until you have, once at least, faced everything you know - the whole universe - with utter giving in, and let all that is 'not you' flow over and engulf you, there can be no lasting sense of security. Only by being prepared to accept annihilation can one escape from that spiritual 'abiding alone' which is in fact the truly death-like state.

Marion Milner

acceptance spiritual giving

Colour is, on the evidence of language alone, very bound up with the feelings.

Marion Milner

evidence language feelings

Love is not getting, but giving. It is sacrifice. And sacrifice is glorious!

Marion Milner

sacrifice love-is giving

Like a fierce wind roaring high up in the bare branches of trees, a wave of passion came over me, aimless but surging . . . I suppose it's lust, but it's awful and holy like thunder and lightning and the wind.

Marion Milner

passion tree wind

Once you assume your right to interfere in other people's problems they become in some ways more of a worry than your own, for with your own you can at least do what you think best, but other people always show such a persistent tendency to do the wrong thing.

Marion Milner

worry people thinking

by taking notice of those feelings and images that seemed to be in my blood and bones rather than in my head, I had found myself able to behave, not less reasonably, but more so. Apparently it was as much a false extreme to try and live by reason alone, leaving the passions out of count, as to ignore reason and put passion in its place as the guiding force of life.

Marion Milner

passion leaving blood

I came to the conclusion then that "continual mindfulness". . . must mean, not a sergeantmajor-like drilling of thoughts, but a continual readiness to accept whatever came.

Marion Milner

accepting mindfulness mean

I want to draw and study a few things closely by feeling, not thinking.

Marion Milner

want feelings thinking

Sometimes I find that in my happy moments I could not believe that I had ever been miserable.

Marion Milner

sometimes life believe

The growth of understanding follows an ascending spiral rather than a straight line.

Marion Milner

learning understanding time