May Sarton Quotes

199 Sourced Quotes

The more our bodies fail us, the more naked and more demanding is the spirit, the more open and loving we can become if we are not afraid of what we are and of what we feel. I am not a phoenix yet, but here among the ashes, it may be that the pain is chiefly that of new wings trying to push through.

May Sarton
I suppose I envy painters because they can meditate on form and structure, on color and light, and not concern themselves with human torment and chaos. It is restful even to imagine expression without words.

May Sarton
It is a waste of time to see people who have only a social surface to show. I will make every effort to find out the real person, but if I can't, then I am upset and cross. Time wasted is poison.

May Sarton
Have the courage to write whatever your dream is for yourself.

May Sarton
When I am alone the flowers are really seen; I can pay attention to them. They are felt as presences. Without them I would die...they change before my eyes. They live and die in a few days; they keep me closely in touch with the process, with growth, and also with dying. I am floated on their moments.

May Sarton
It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it.

May Sarton
What we have not has made us what we are. /... / What we are not drives us to consummation.

May Sarton
Miracles cannot be explained, that is their miraculous nature.

May Sarton
The beginner hugs his infant poem to him and does not want it to grow up. But you may have to break your poem to remake it.

May Sarton
How much hope, expectation, and sheer hard work goes into the smallest success! There is no being sure of anything except that whatever has been created will change in time...

May Sarton
One must believe that private dilemmas are, if deeply examined, universal, and so, if expressed, have a human value beyond the private, and one must also believe in the vehicle for expressing them, in the talent.

May Sarton
I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.

May Sarton
You will always be here with me; As long as I live, A towering figure of love.

May Sarton
It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning, but when we can believe it - and I do and always have - then there is nothing we do that is without meaning and nothing that we suffer that does not hold the seed of creation in it.

May Sarton
The price of being oneself is so high and involves so much ruthlessness toward others (or what looks like ruthlessness in our duty-bound culture) that very few people can afford it.

May Sarton
We have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can-if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough-be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being.

May Sarton
Go rich in poverty. Go rich in poetry. This nothingness is plentitude.

May Sarton
Once more I realize that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one's self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

May Sarton
A body without bones would be a limp impossible mess, so a day without steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic.

May Sarton
Now it has become impossible to guard one's soul — death to do it — we are forced to read the papers, and yet I still believe that our job is somehow or other to be above the mêlée, or so deeply in it that one comes through to something else, something universal and timeless.

May Sarton
I come to you with only this straight gaze.
These are not hours of fire but years of praise.
The glass full to the brim, completely full.
But held in balance so no drop can spill.

May Sarton
For a long time, for years, I have carried in my mind the excruciating image of plants, bulbs, in a cellar, trying to grow without light, putting out white shoots that will inevitably wither.

May Sarton
Now we have buried the face we never knew,
Now we have silenced the voice we never heard,
Now he is dead we look on him with awe.

May Sarton
Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and some pure foolishness.

May Sarton
If I were to choose one single thing that that would restore Paris to the senses, it would be that strangely sweet, unhealthy smell of the Metro, so very unlike the dank cold or the stuffy heat of subways in New York.

May Sarton
Poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.

May Sarton
Poetry is a dangerous profession between conflict and resolution, between feeling and thought, between becoming and being, between the ultra-personal and the universal — and these balances are shifting all the time.

May Sarton
I've been thinking about happiness-how wrong it is ever to expect it to last or there to be a time of happiness. It's not that, it's a moment of happiness. Almost every day contains at least one moment of happiness.

May Sarton
We cannot afford not to fight for growth and understanding, even when it is painful, as it is bound to be.

May Sarton
Human relations just are not fixed in their orbits like the planets—they're more like galaxies, changing all the time, exploding into light for years, then dying away.

May Sarton