01UndatedThere is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.May Sarton / quote ↗
02UndatedI 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 / quote ↗
03UndatedI am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my "real" life again at last. That is what is strange - that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and "the house and I resume old conversations".May Sarton / quote ↗
04UndatedKeep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.May Sarton / quote ↗
05UndatedEverything in us presses toward decision, even toward the wrong decision, just to be free of the anxiety that precedes any big step in life.May Sarton / quote ↗
06UndatedWithout darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.May Sarton / quote ↗
07UndatedAnd how long would the life in me stay alive if it did not find new roots?I behaved like a starving man who knows there is foot somewhere if he can only find it. I did not reason anything out. I did not reason that part of the food I needed was to become a member of a community richer and more various, humanly speaking, than the academic world of Cambridge could provide: the hunger of the novelist. I did not reason that part of the nourishment I craved was all the natural world can give - a garden, woods, fields, brooks, birds: the hunger of the poet. I did not reason that the time had come when I needed a house of my own, a nest of my own making: the hunger of the woman.May Sarton / quote ↗
08UndatedAnd how long would the life in me stay alive if it did not find new roots?I behaved like a starving man who knows there is food somewhere if he can only find it. I did not reason anything out. I did not reason that part of the food I needed was to become a member of a community richer and more various, humanly speaking, than the academic world of Cambridge could provide: the hunger of the novelist. I did not reason that part of the nourishment I craved was all the natural world can give - a garden, woods, fields, brooks, birds: the hunger of the poet. I did not reason that the time had come when I needed a house of my own, a nest of my own making: the hunger of the woman.May Sarton / quote ↗
09UndatedWrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.May Sarton / quote ↗
12UndatedThe most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.May Sarton / quote ↗
13UndatedLife comes in clusters clusters of solitude then clusters when there is hardly time to breathe.May Sarton / quote ↗
15UndatedWhy is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?May Sarton / quote ↗
16UndatedEach day and the living of it has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.May Sarton / quote ↗
17UndatedHelp us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers.May Sarton / quote ↗
18UndatedIt was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always she had to admit interesting.May Sarton / quote ↗
20UndatedThere is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.May Sarton / quote ↗
21UndatedFor inside all the weakness of old age the spirit God knows is as mercurial as it ever was.May Sarton / quote ↗
24UndatedThere is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.May Sarton / quote ↗