May Sarton Quotes

199 Sourced Quotes

You can't break the mould and also be consoled for breaking it, old fool!

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

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 can do anything, or almost, but how balanced, magnanimous, and modest one has to be to do anything! And also how patient. It is as true in the arts as anywhere else.

May Sarton
Pain can make a whole winter bright, like fever, force us to live deep and hard.

May Sarton
And one cold starry night / Whatever your belief / The phoenix will take flight / Over the seas of grief / To sing her thrilling song / To stars and waves and sky / For neither old nor young / The phoenix does not die.

May Sarton
The value of solitude - one of its values - is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within, just as there is nothing to help balance at times of particular stress or depression...

May Sarton
Gardening is a madness, a folly that does not go away with age. Quite the contrary.

May Sarton
I want feelings to be expressed, to be open, to be natural, not to be looked on as strange. It's not weird if you feel deeply.

May Sarton
When we speak of being vulnerable, it suggests being especially vulnerable to pain. People for whom personal dignity and self-sufficiency are everything, do all they can to shut it out. Noli mi tangere. They are well aware that any intimate relationship has pain in it, forces a special kind of awareness, is costly, and so they try to keep themselves unencumbered by shutting pain out as far as it is possible to do so.

May Sarton
We are all jellyfish, too pitiful and too afraid of being disliked to be honest.

May Sarton
Growing old is, of all things we experience, that which takes the most courage, and at a time when we have the least resources, especially with which to meet frustration.

May Sarton
It is the place of renewal and of safety, where for a little while there will be no harm or attack and, while every sense is nourished, the soul rests.

May Sarton
It is possible, I suppose, that we are returning to a Dark Age. What is frightening is that violence is not only represented by nations, but everywhere walks among us freely.

May Sarton
For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been the reverberations after even the simplest conversation. But the deep collision is and has been with my unregenerate, tormenting and tormented self...I am unable to become what I see. I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful halt, "won't go"...

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

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

May Sarton