The 7 Best Phrases Of Anaïs Nin

The most characteristic of Anaïs Nin’s phrases are the freshness and honesty with which they were created. Some of his statements come out of his Diaries , which in total comprise a volume of 35,000 pages. He started writing them at age 11 and never stopped doing it.

Likewise, another  good part of Anaïs Nin’s phrases that have given her the most fame come from the correspondence she exchanged with Henry Miller, from when she was 27 years old until her death. The two became one of the most iconic couples in the literary world.

This writer, born in France, but nationalized in the United States, was scandalous to many. She was the first woman to publish erotic stories in America. His direct and uninhibited style caused a lot of sting in his time. However, the most remarkable thing about his work is not the erotic, but his reflection on the human. Without further ado, these are some of Anaïs Nin’s most remembered phrases.

1. In courage is the measure

One of the most beautiful and exultant phrases of Anaïs Nin says the following: ” Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. ” The most interesting thing about the statement is that it mentions courage as the great determinant of the degree of coverage of life, so to speak.

You are absolutely right. Fear has the particularity of confining us to narrow margins, either of ideas or of spaces and experiences. Courage, on the other hand, is the force that leads us to cross borders and expand our reality.

2. Things as they are

This is one of Anaïs Nin’s phrases in which she reaffirms that subjectivist tradition of which she was a part. He points out: ” We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. ” In other words, reality is a personal construction.

Each human being “filters” reality, based on their desires , fears, personal history, etc. For this reason, what one person defines as “real” is not exactly equivalent to what another person defines as such. Subjectivity determines how everyone sees things.

3. One of Anaïs Nin’s phrases about love

Many of Anaïs Nin’s phrases are dedicated to love. This one, for example, says: “ You cannot save people. You can only love them ”. It shows us a realistic perspective, as opposed to a romantic point of view on love.

In romanticism, love is the answer and salvation. In reality, everyone must deal with their destiny, which is the result of internal and external factors. Nothing and nobody changes this. True love just loves.

4. The world that everyone builds

Many people go through life believing that it is others or the world that must change so that reality is more tolerable. However, the one who finally makes it assimilable and digestible is ourselves.

That is what is embodied in this phrase: ” When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others. ” The task is to build a tolerable world for ourselves. With that is more than enough to improve the world of others.

5. Natural death in love

This is another of Anaïs Nin’s beautiful phrases about love: “ Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we do not know how to replace its source ”. The most interesting thing about the statement is the reference to the source.

Love is not born out of nowhere, but there are factors or reasons that combine for it to arise. In that origin of love is also its essence. So if we want him not to die, the goal is to go back to the essentials of it, over and over again.

6. What is shame?

Anaïs Nin says that: ” Shame is the lie that someone told you about you. ” It is a very sharp and profound observation that unravels the hidden plot of shame. First, he defines it as a lie and then as something that comes from others, not oneself.

There is shame, because simultaneously there is a glance from another that points. It is this point that leads us to feel that our own is not worthy, or that it should be hidden. Hence the shame is born: from the credit we give to what someone partially sees of us.

7. The fear of death

Death is a recurring theme in literature. Anaïs Nin also reflected on it and its implications. Hence this simple, but forceful statement: ” People who live deeply are not afraid of death. “

The fear of death arises to a great extent from that confrontation with the possibility of not being. To dilute ourselves into nothingness. That fear is greatest when the pulse of life has not been fully explored. It is something like the fear of never being able to be, what has not been possible to be.

These phrases by Anaïs Nin are just a small sample of the interesting work of this writer, who defied taboos and prejudices. He had the courage to live according to his own criteria and making love a universal and very human feeling, which has no barriers.