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To withhold from living is to die ... the more you give of yourself to life the more life nourishes you.

Anais Nin

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Anais Nin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1903
Born: February 21
Died: 1977
Died: January 14
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Neuilly
Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
Anais Nin
Living
Give
Giving
Life
Nourishes
Withhold
Dies

More quotes by Anais Nin

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The two men who have done the greatest harm to the world are Christ and Columbus. Christ taught us guilt and sacrifice, to live only in the other world, and Columbus discovered America and materialism.
Anais Nin
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We are cruel when someone refuses to play the role in which we have cast him. We judge a person only according to his relationship towards us.
Anais Nin
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For all of my patients sensuality is a giving in to 'the low side of their nature.' Puritanism is powerful and distorts their life with a total anesthesia of the senses. If you atrophy one sense, you also atrophy all the others, a sensuous and physical connection with nature, with art, with food, with other human beings.
Anais Nin
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I have no brakes on...analysis is for those who are paralyzed by life.
Anais Nin
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All the art of analysis consists in saying a truth only when the other person is ready for it, has been prepared for it by an organic process of gradation and evolution.
Anais Nin
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I believe the lasting revolution comes from deep changes in ourselves which influence our collective life.
Anais Nin
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The man who was once starved may revenge himself upon the world not by stealing just once, or by stealing only what he needs, but by taking from the world an endless toll in payment of something irreplaceable, which is the lost faith.
Anais Nin
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Innocence was gone from all our acts. Our habitual state of rebellion became a serious political crime.
Anais Nin
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We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.
Anais Nin
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Perfection is static, And I am in full progress.
Anais Nin
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She was fully, painfully aware that very rarely did midnight strike in two hearts at once, very rarely did midnight arouse two different equal desires, and that any dislocation in this, any indifference, was an indication of disunity, of the difficulties, the impossibilities of fusion between two human beings.
Anais Nin
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I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated
Anais Nin
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I either eat too much or starve myself. Sleep for 14 hours or have insomniac nights. Fall in love very hard or hate passionately. I don't know what grey is. I never did.
Anais Nin
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The only transformer and alchemist that turns everything into gold is love. The only magic against death, aging, ordinary life, is love.
Anais Nin
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We three belong to the Middle Ages. We have this need of heroism, and there is no place for such feelings in modern life. That is our tragedy. Once I wanted to be a saint. It seemed the only absolute act left to do, for what is most powerful in me is the craving for purity, greatness.
Anais Nin
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I have no fear of God, and yet fear keeps me awake at night,fear of the devil. And if I believe in the devil, I must believe in God. And if evil is abhorrent to me, I must be a saint. Henry, save me from beatification, from the horrors of static perfection. Precipitate me into the inferno.
Anais Nin
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One may gain one truth at the expense of another.
Anais Nin
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I want to fall in love in such a way that the mere sight of a man, even a block away from me, will shake and pierce me, will weaken me, and make me tremble and soften and melt.
Anais Nin
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Experience teaches acceptance of the imperfect as life.
Anais Nin
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The period without the diary remains an ordeal. Every evening I want my diary as one wants opium.
Anais Nin