It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it. May Sarton More Quotes by May Sarton More Quotes From May Sarton It is harder for women, perhaps to be 'one-pointed,' much harder for them to clear space around whatever it is they want to do beyond household chores and family life. Their lives are fragmented... the cry not so much for a 'a room of one's own' as time of one's own. Conflict become acute, whatever it may be about, when there is no margin left on any day in which to try at least to resolve it. May Sarton spacemaytrying A house that does not have one warm, comfy chair in it is soulless. May Sarton housedoehome The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become. May Sarton dangerousdanger No partner in a love relationship... should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable. May Sarton giving-uploverelationship Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite. May Sarton oppositeswantgiving Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We have now arrived at a stage in life so rich in new perceptions that cannot be transmitted to those at another stage - one feels at the same time full of so much gentleness and so much despair - the enigma of this life grows, grows, drowns one and crushes one, then all of a sudden in a supreme moment of light one becomes aware of the sacred. May Sarton crushperceptionlight 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 griefwritingthinking Absence becomes the greatest Presence. May Sarton absence 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 givingmenamerica The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind. May Sarton minutesmindopposites Flowers and plants are silent presences. They nourish every sense except the ear. May Sarton musicflowerlife ... 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 selfclasstwo When you change the way you look at a thing, the thing itself changes...By mastering feelings, she had come to understand the meaning of discipline and its reward: freedom and power. May Sarton disciplinefeelingslooks 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? May Sarton oddsdoereality I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love. May Sarton making-lovealivewriting 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 importantforgetremember Try making a poem as if it were a table, clear and solid, standing there outside you. May Sarton cleartablestrying I am realizing once and for all the difference as far as I am concerned of women and men and the necessity for both. With a man, however tender he is, one is feeding him - one is always and eternally understanding, mothering, supplying him with faith in himself (not in you). May Sarton differencesunderstandingmen In poetry compromise is fatal. In action of any cooperative sort it is inevitable. The thing is to find the balance. May Sarton balancecompromiseaction The fact is that I have lived with the belief that power, any kind of power, was the one thing forbidden to poets. ... Power requires that the inner person never be unmasked. No, we poets have to go naked. And since this is so, it is better that we stay private people; a naked public person would be rather ridiculous, what? May Sarton nakedwould-bepeople
