May Sarton Quotes - Page 3

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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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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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Do not deprive me of my age. I have earned it.

May Sarton

Age, Aging

May Sarton (2017). “The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering”, p.62, Open Road Media

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

May Sarton

Revision, Creation, Process

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So this was fame at last! Nothing but a vast debt to be paid to the world in energy, blood, and time.

May Sarton

Blood, Energy, Debt

May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.34, Open Road Media

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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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When I am alone the flowers are really seen; I can pay attention to them. They are felt as presences. Without them I would die...they change before my eyes. They live and die in a few days; they keep me closely in touch with the process, with growth, and also with dying. I am floated on their moments.

May Sarton

Flower, Eye, Growth

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Poetry is a dangerous profession between conflict and resolution, between feeling and thought, between becoming and being, between the ultra-personal and the universal - and these balances are shifting all the time.

May Sarton

Feelings, Balance, Shifting

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The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need: in the artist it is mandatory. Unable to fulfill it, he goes mad. But when the artist is a woman she fulfills it at the expense of herself as a woman.

May Sarton

Art, Psychics, Mad

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

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

May Sarton

Children, Powerful, Entrepreneur

May Sarton (2014). “I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography”, p.73, Open Road Media

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

May Sarton

Novel, Felt, Written

May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.26, Open Road Media

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What frightens me about America today is that in the large majority there is no active sense of the value of the individual: few citizens feel that they are the Republic, responsible for what happens. And when the individual in a democracy ceases to feel his importance, then there is grave danger that he will give over his freedom, if not to a Fascist State, then to the advertising men or Publicity Agents or to the newspaper he happens to read.

May Sarton

Men, America, Giving

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In the country of pain we are each alone.

May Sarton

Country, Pain

May Sarton (2014). “Halfway to Silence: Poems”, p.35, Open Road Media

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letters are so much easier than living. One can give one's best.

May Sarton

Giving, Letters, Easier

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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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poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.

May Sarton

Writing, Way, Firsts

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For poetry is, I believe, always an act of the spirit. The poem teaches us something while we make it. The poem makes you as you make the poem, and your making of the poem requires all your capacities of thought, feeling, analysis, and synthesis.

May Sarton

Believe, Feelings, Analysis

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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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In 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

Mistake, Optimistic, Past

May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.2, 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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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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The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

May Sarton

Nature, Mean, Loss

May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.111, Open Road Media

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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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The poet must be free to love or hate as the spirit moves him, free to change, free to be a chameleon, free to be an enfant terrible. He must above all never worry about this effect on other people.

May Sarton

Hate, Moving, People

1965 Hilary Stevens. Mrs Stevens Hears theMermaids Singing, pt.2.

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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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Born: May 3, 1912
Died: July 16, 1995
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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