May Sarton - Journal of a Solitude (1973)

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There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.

May Sarton
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

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
The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.

May Sarton
Women are at last becoming persons first and wives second, and that is as it should be.

May Sarton
Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.

May Sarton
I suppose I have written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems to find out what I felt about something.

May Sarton
The ambience here is order and beauty. That is what frightens me when I am first alone again. I feel inadequate. I have made an open place, a place for meditation. What if I cannot find myself inside it?

May Sarton
At some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.

May Sarton
I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.

May Sarton
What is destructive is impatience, haste, expecting too much too fast.

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
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
I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope and is always thrilling.

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 season is changeable, fitful, and maddening as I am myself these days that are cloaked with too many demands and engagements.

May Sarton
The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

May Sarton
A house that does not have one warm, comfy chair in it is soulless.

May Sarton
Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude, then a cluster when there is hardly time to breathe.

May Sarton