May Sarton Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Does 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

  Letting Go, Nature, Pain

  May Sarton (2017). “The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering”, p.31, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Artist, Self, Joy

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.52, Open Road Media

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

  May Sarton

  Ocean, Dark, Blue

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• I asked myself the question, 'What do you want of your life?' and I realized with a start of recognition and terror, 'Exactly what I have - but to be commensurate, to handle it all better.

  May Sarton

  Want, Recognition, Terror

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.72, Open Road Media

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• If 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?

  May Sarton

  Art, Children, Book

  "The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering".

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• 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

  Real, Believe, Holding Back

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.52, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Believe, Belief, Talent

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.40, Open Road Media

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• Try making a poem as if it were a table, clear and solid, standing there outside you.

  May Sarton

  Trying, Tables, Clear

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• I want feelings to be expressed, to be open, to be natural, not to be looked on as strange. It's not weird if you feel deeply.

  May Sarton

  Feelings, Want, Strange

  May Sarton, Earl G. Ingersoll (1991). “Conversations with May Sarton”, p.121, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Fire is a good companion for the mind.

  May Sarton

  Fire, Mind, Companion

  May Sarton (2014). “Collected Poems: 1930–1973”, p.197, Open Road Media

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• Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.

  May Sarton

  Real, Believe, Struggle

  May Sarton (2015). “May Sarton: A Self-Portrait”, p.11, Open Road Media

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• True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.

  May Sarton

  Feelings, Cost, May

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.106, Open Road Media

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• When we admit our vulnerability, we include others. If we deny it, we shut them out.

  May Sarton

  Pet, Deny, Ifs

  May Sarton (2014). “Recovering: A Journal”, p.138, Open Road Media

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• There 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

  Essence, People, Challenges

  May Sarton, Edith Royce Schade (1994). “From May Sarton's well: writings of May Sarton”, Papier Mache Pr

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

  May Sarton

  Courage, Hero, Thinking

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.72, Open Road Media

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• It is good for a professional to be reminded that his professionalism is only a husk, that the real person must remain an amateur, a lover of the work.

  May Sarton

  Real, Work, Lovers

  May Sarton (2014). “Plant Dreaming Deep: A Journal”, p.75, Open Road Media

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• Solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people... precludes awareness of one's self so that after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

  May Sarton

  Self, People, Solitude

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.135, Open Road Media

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• It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

  May Sarton

  Inspirational, Truth, Enough

  May Sarton (2017). “The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering”, p.114, Open Road Media

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• I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word, a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines. I write too many letters and too few poems.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Rainy Day, Silence

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• Your poems will happen when no one is there.

  May Sarton

  Happens

  May Sarton (2014). “A Grain of Mustard Seed: Poems”, p.43, Open Road Media

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

  May Sarton

  Understanding, Essentials, Facts

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.7, Open Road Media

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

  May Sarton

  Death, Failure, Loss

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.53, Open Road Media

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• And one cold starry night / Whatever your belief / The phoenix will take flight / Over the seas of grief / To sing her thrilling song / To stars and waves and sky / For neither old nor young / The phoenix does not die.

  May Sarton

  Song, Stars, Grief

  "The Phoenix Again" l. 17 (1988)

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• I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Making Love, Alive

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• 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

  Grief, Writing, Thinking

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