May Sarton Quotes

199 Sourced Quotes

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

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
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
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
Miracles cannot be explained, that is their miraculous nature.

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

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

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

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
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
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
If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked.

May Sarton
The body is a universe in itself and must be held as sacred as anything in creation....It is dangerous to forget the body as sacramental.

May Sarton
Read between the lines.Then meet me in the silence if you can.

May Sarton
For of course one is never safe when in love. Growth is demanding and may seem dangerous, for there is loss as well as gain in growth. But why go on living if one has ceased to grow? And what more demanding atmosphere for growth than love in any form, than any relationship which can call out and requires of us our most secret and deepest selves?

May Sarton
Deep down there was understanding, not of the facts of our lives so much as of our essential natures.

May Sarton
The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need: in the artist it is mandatory. Unable to fulfill it, he goes mad. But when the artist is a woman she fulfills it at the expense of herself as a woman.

May Sarton
I write poems, have always written them, to transcend the painfully personal and reach the universal.

May Sarton