May Sarton Quotes

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

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.

Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.

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

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.

The 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.

There are some griefs so loud/They could bring down the sky/And there are griefs so still/None knows how deep they lie.

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

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

Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places.

One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine. . . who one is and wants to be.

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

For me the moral dilemma this past year has been how to make peace with the unacceptable.

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

How slowly one comes to understand anything!

Fire is a good companion for the mind.

Words are more powerful than perhaps anyone suspects, and once deeply engraved in a child's mind, they are not easily eradicated.

People who are always thinking of the feelings of others can be very destructive because they are hiding so much from themselves.

Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.

... if one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Keep 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.

For 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.

Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

One of the good elements of old age is that we no longer have to prove anything, to ourselves or to anyone else. We are what we are.

Innocence is not pure so much as pleased, Always expectant, bright-eyed, self-enclosed

We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.

Gardening is an instrument of grace.

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.

What is there to do when people die - people so dear and rare - but bring them back by remembering?

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

Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything - except itself.

Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation

It looks as if I were meant to be alone, and that any hope of happiness is not meant. Am I too old to acquire the knack for happiness?

There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.

When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

Love cannot exorcise the gifts of hate. / Hate cannot exorcize what has no weight, / But laughter we can never over-rate.

I see a certain order in the universe and math is one way of making it visible.

We cannot afford not to fight for growth and understanding, even when it is painful, as it is bound to be.

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

Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.

Where music thundered let the mind be still, Where the will triumphed let there be no will, What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.

Most people have to talk so they won't hear.

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

No partner in a love relationship... should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.

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

Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd.

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.

It is dark now. The snow is deep blue and the ocean nearly black. It is time for some music.