May Sarton
34 quotes
Biography
Eleanore Marie Sarton, known by the pen name May Sarton, was a Belgian and American novelist, poet, and memoirist. Notably, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her writing in 1965, a time when it was highly unusual to do so.
"Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite."
"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."
"Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels."
"One 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?"
"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."
"A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself."
"It is the privilege of those who fear love to murder those who do not fear it!"
"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."
"Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers."
"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."
"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."
"No partner in a love relationship... should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable."
"I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love."
"There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much."
"There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most."
"The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become."
"The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters."
"A house that does not have one warm, comfy chair in it is soulless."
"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."
"I 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"."
"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."
"Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers."
"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."
"Life comes in clusters clusters of solitude then clusters when there is hardly time to breathe."
"Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another."