Self-respect is nothing to hide behind. When you need it most it isn't there. May Sarton More Quotes by May Sarton More Quotes From May Sarton Is it perhaps the one necessity of love, that it be needed? And the one great human tragedy that it so rarely is? May Sarton humanstragedyneeded Love is our human miracle. May Sarton miraclehumanslove-is My musical genius reached its apex thirty years ago when I played the triangle in Haydn's children's symphony, so I could not play unless you needed someone to make one sustained note! May Sarton musical-geniuschildrenyears Poetry has a way of teaching one what one needs to know ... if one is honest. May Sarton teachingwayneeds There were moments ... when it seemed that all one could be asked was just to keep the ashtrays clean, the bed made, the wastebaskets emptied, as if one never got to the real things because of the constant exhausting battle to keep ordinary life from falling apart. May Sarton battlerealfall Go rich in poverty. Go rich in poetry. This nothingness is plentitude. May Sarton nothingnessrichpoverty True power is given to the vulnerable. May Sarton true-powergivenvulnerable This suspension of one's own reality, this being entirely alone in a strange city (at times I wondered if I had lost the power of speech) is an enriching state for a writer. Then the written word ... takes on an intensity of its own. Nothing gets exteriorized or dissipated; all is concentrated within. May Sarton citiesrealitytravel For poetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in the cellar may come out to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing, to bring life back to the enclosed rooms where too often we are only 'living and partly living. May Sarton break-throughsingingangel Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year. May Sarton wrinklespastyears each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature. May Sarton formalenergyliterature For after all we make our faces as we go along. May Sarton faces For me the moral dilemma this past year has been how to make peace with the unacceptable. May Sarton making-peacedilemmamoral Nobody stays special when they're old, Anna. That's what we have to learn. May Sarton annaspecial It's extraordinary how little two people can understand each other and how cruel two people who are fond of each other can be to each other - there is practically no cruelty so awful because their power to hurt is so great. May Sarton hurttwopeople I sometimes imagine that as one grows older one comes to live a role which as a young person one merely 'played. May Sarton imaginerolessometimes It is always hard to hear the buried truth from another person. May Sarton buriedhardpersons An old body when it is loved becomes a sacred treasure; and sex itself must always, it seems to me, come to us as a sacrament and be so used or it is meaningless. The flesh is suffused by the spirit, and it is forgetting this in the act of love-making that creates cynicism and despair. May Sarton despairtreasuresex Once more I realize that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one's self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists. May Sarton solitudeselfpeople in the very long run any success devours - and perhaps also corrupts. May Sarton successrunninglong
