01UndatedWe have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.May Sarton / quote ↗
02UndatedThe Fur Person learned then and there that it is better to be a philosopher than to be a king and that, all things considered, wisdom was to be preferred to power.May Sarton / quote ↗
03UndatedWhere music thundered let the mind be still,Where the will triumphed let there be no will,What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.May Sarton / quote ↗
04UndatedI am not ready to die,But I am learning to trust deathAs I have trusted life.I am movingToward a new freedomMay Sarton / quote ↗
06UndatedFor any writer who wants to keep a journal, be alive to everything, not just to what you're feeling, but also to your pets, to flowers, to what you're reading.May Sarton / quote ↗
07UndatedI feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love.May Sarton / quote ↗
08UndatedAnyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.May Sarton / quote ↗
09UndatedPublic education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite.May Sarton / quote ↗
10UndatedOne has only to set a loved human being against the fact that we are all in peril all the time to get back a sense of proportion. What does anything matter compared to the reality of love and its span, so brief at best, maintained against such odds?May Sarton / quote ↗
11UndatedWhen I speak of life and love as expanding with age, sex seems the least important thing. At any age we grow by the enlarging of consciousness, by learning a new language, or a new art or craft (gardening?) that implies a new way of looking at the universe. Love is one of the great enlargers of the person because it requires us to "take in" the stranger and to understand him, and to exercise restraint and tolerance as well as imagination to make the relationship work.May Sarton / quote ↗
12UndatedIf art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine--why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as 'irrelevant'?May Sarton / quote ↗
13UndatedDoes anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.May Sarton / quote ↗
16UndatedAnd now we who are writing women and strange monstersStill search our hearts to find the difficult answers,Still hope that we may learn to lay our handsMore gently and more subtly on the burning sands.May Sarton / quote ↗
17UndatedThere are some griefs so loudThey could bring down the sky,And there are griefs so stillNone knows how deep they lie,Endured, never expended.There are old griefs so proudThey never speak a word;They never can be mended.And these nourish the willAnd keep it iron-hard.May Sarton / quote ↗
19Undated...The means of choice:She might choose to ascendThe falling dream,By some angelic power without a nameReverse the motion, plunge into upwardness,Know height without an end,Density melt to air, silence yield a voice--Within her fall she felt the pull of Grace.May Sarton / quote ↗
20UndatedA bolt that raised her heart to blazing heightAnd made the vertical the very thrust of hope,And found its path at last(Slow work of Grace).May Sarton / quote ↗
22UndatedIt is time I came back to my real lifeAfter this voyage to an island with no name,Where I lay down at sunrise drunk with light.May Sarton / quote ↗
23UndatedI can tell you that solitudeIs not all exaltation, inner spaceWhere the soul breaths and work can be done.Solitude exposes the nerve,Raises up ghosts.The past, never at rest, flows through it.May Sarton / quote ↗
24UndatedIn the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.May Sarton / quote ↗
