May Sarton Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• The price of being oneself is so high and involves so much ruthlessness toward others (or what looks like ruthlessness in our duty-bound culture) that very few people can afford it.

  May Sarton

  People, Culture, Looks

  May Sarton (2014). “The House by the Sea: A Journal”, p.43, Open Road Media

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• So let the world go, but hold fast to joy.

  May Sarton

  Joy, World, Hold Fast

  May Sarton (2014). “Selected Poems of May Sarton”, p.144, Open Road Media

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• Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?

  May Sarton

  Strength, Happiness, People

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• Do I think there's life after death? No, I think my books are my life after death.

  May Sarton

  Book, Thinking, Immortality

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• Nobody stays special when they're old, Anna. That's what we have to learn.

  May Sarton

  Special, Anna

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• I cannot understand why poetry is not taught at schools as a way of seeing, a quick, untiring path to essentials.

  May Sarton

  School, Essentials, Way

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• It is always hard to hear the buried truth from another person.

  May Sarton

  Buried, Persons, Hard

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.28, Open Road Media

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• In the novel or the journal you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival.

  May Sarton

  Journey, Novel, Journal

  May Sarton, Earl G. Ingersoll (1991). “Conversations with May Sarton”, p.119, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• 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.

  May Sarton

  Autumn, Long, October

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.18, Open Road Media

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• a poet never feels useful.

  May Sarton

  Poet, Feels

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.84, Open Road Media

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• have the courage to write whatever your dream is for yourself.

  May Sarton

  Dream, Writing, Your Dreams

  May Sarton, Earl G. Ingersoll (1991). “Conversations with May Sarton”, p.190, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Light is snow sifted / To an abstraction.

  May Sarton

  Light, Snow, Abstraction

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• Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius. Think of the capacity to learn! The freshness, the temperament, the will of a baby a few months old!

  May Sarton

  Baby, Thinking, Genius

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.63, Open Road Media

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

  May Sarton

  Baby, Genius, Forget

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.63, Open Road Media

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• I suppose one has to remember that 'life' is important too, though it's something I forget in some moods, everything except work seeming like an interruption or really non-life.

  May Sarton

  Important, Remember, Forget

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• A body without bones would be a limp impossible mess, so a day without steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic.

  May Sarton

  Would Be, Routine, Body

  May Sarton (2014). “At Eighty-Two: A Journal”, p.7, Open Road Media

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• In poetry compromise is fatal. In action of any cooperative sort it is inevitable. The thing is to find the balance.

  May Sarton

  Balance, Action, Compromise

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• “How does one grow up?” I asked a friend the other day. There was a slight pause; then she answered, “By thinking.”

  May Sarton

  Growing Up, Maturity, Thinking

  "Journal of a Solitude".

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• we are never done with thinking about our parents, I suppose, and come to know them better long after they are dead than we ever did when they were alive.

  May Sarton

  Thinking, Long, Parent

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.18, Open Road Media

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• One of the springs of poetry is joy.

  May Sarton

  Spring, Joy, Poetry Is

  May Sarton (2015). “Writings on Writing”, p.6, Open Road Media

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• ... the reason why there are so few first-class poets is that many people have intense feelings or first-class minds but to get the two together so that you will be willing to put a poem through sixty drafts, to be that self-critical, to keep breaking it down, that is what is rare. Right now most poetry is just self-indulgence.

  May Sarton

  Self, Class, Two

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• The tragic thing about learning from experience is I fear that one can only learn from one's own experience. Other people's - other nations' - experiences simply do not help. They can be imaginatively learned from. But people do not act on other people's experiences.

  May Sarton

  People, Experience, Helping

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

  May Sarton

  Acceptance, Balance, Asking

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

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• over and over again I am struck by the wordiness of modern poetry, as if language had replaced experience and must be more and more extreme, intricate and in a way divorced from life itself. It seems as if what we all need is a great purification - but how will that come about?

  May Sarton

  Needs, Way, Language

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• I am not a greedy person except about flowers and plants, and then I become fanatically greedy.

  May Sarton

  Flower, Garden, Greedy

  May Sarton (2015). “Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year”, p.188, Open Road Media

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