Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places. May Sarton More Quotes by May Sarton More Quotes From May Sarton Inside my mother's death / I lay and could not breathe. May Sarton breathe grief mother What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation. May Sarton ambition made desire Unless the gentle inherit the earth, / There will be no earth. May Sarton gentle earth I cannot understand why poetry is not taught at schools as a way of seeing, a quick, untiring path to essentials. May Sarton essentials way school I have sometimes wondered also whether in people like me who come to the boil fast (soupe au lait, the French call this trait, like a milk soup that boils over) the tantrum is not a built-in safety valve against madness or illness. ... The fierce tension in me, when it is properly channeled, creates the good tension for work. But when it becomes unbalanced I am destructive. How to isolate that good tension is my problem these days. Or, put in another way, how to turn the heat down fast enough so the soup won't boil over! May Sarton safety anger people Failure would only be if you had somewhere stopped growing. As far as I can see the whole duty of the artist is to keep on growing. May Sarton growing failure artist I am furious at all the letters to answer, when all I want to do is think and write poems. ... I long for open time, with no obligations except toward the inner world and what is going on there. May Sarton writing long thinking Lunches are just not good. They take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning's work. May Sarton lunch heart morning Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another. May Sarton one-thing solitude loneliness I find that when I have any appointment, even an afternoon one, it changes the whole quality of time. I feel overcharged. There is no space for what wells up from the subconscious; those dreams and images live in deep still water and simply submerge when the day gets scattered. May Sarton space dream water So this was fame at last! Nothing but a vast debt to be paid to the world in energy, blood, and time. May Sarton debt energy blood I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life. May Sarton learning-to-trust life-and-death ready Excellence costs a great deal. May Sarton deals cost excellence Death does frame a person and somehow it is the good that stays. May Sarton persons doe I love giving flowers. It is so deliciously unlasting and romantic. May Sarton romance flower giving I simply adore being alone - I find it a consuming thirst - and when that thirst is slaked, then I am happy. May Sarton thirst adore solitude Gardening is one of the rewards of middle age, when one is ready for an impersonal passion, a passion that demands patience, acute awareness of a world outside oneself, and the power to keep on growing through all the times of drought, through the cold snows, towards those moments of pure joy when all failures are forgotten and the plum tree flowers. May Sarton passion flower snow It is possible, I suppose, that we are returning to a Dark Age. What is frightening is that violence is not only represented by nations, but everywhere walks among us freely. May Sarton violence age dark I suppose I envy painters because they can meditate on form and structure, on color and light, and not concern themselves with human torment and chaos. It is restful even to imagine expression without words. May Sarton color light expression gardening is a madness, a folly that does not go away with age. Quite the contrary. May Sarton gardening going-away age
