May Sarton

Gardening is an instrument of grace.

— May Sarton

Most people have to talk so they won't hear.

— May Sarton

Time unbounded is hard to handle.

— May Sarton

“But tears are an indulgence. Memory sings.”

— May Sarton

Fire is a good companion for the mind.

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

Excellence costs a great deal.

— May Sarton

In the country of pain we are each alone.

— May Sarton

It is the privilege of those who fear love to murder those who do not fear it!

— May Sarton

For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was.

— May Sarton

What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.

— May Sarton

Flowers and plants are silent presences. They nourish every sense except the ear.

— May Sarton

There the door is always open into the “holy” — growth, birth, death.

— May Sarton

About loving, I have little to learn from the young.

— May Sarton

“It is alarming to feel the soul Leap to the surface and find no sheltering wall.”

— May Sarton

What is there to do when people die - people so dear and rare - but bring them back by remembering?

— May Sarton

He [the cat] wound himself around her legs, purring the purr of ardent desire like a kettle coming to a boil and…

— May Sarton

The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light…

— May Sarton

Growing old is, of all things we experience, that which takes the most courage, and at a time when we have the…

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

There was such a thing as women's work and it consisted chiefly, Hilary sometimes thought, in being able to stand constant interruption…

— May Sarton

There are some griefs so loud/They could bring down the sky/And there are griefs so still/None knows how deep they lie.

— May Sarton

The poet must be free to love or hate as the spirit moves him, free to change, free to be a chameleon,…

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

“All aspiring writers say these things: "I will not compromise and write a best seller!"—as if they could! There may be a…

— May Sarton

“But when Ellen throws at me that I have never had to struggle I feel like saying, 'Maybe. But I have had…

— May Sarton

The fact is that I have lived with the belief that power, any kind of power, was the one thing forbidden to…

— May Sarton

In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful…

— May Sarton

An old body when it is loved becomes a sacred treasure; and sex itself must always, it seems to me, come to…

— May Sarton

And one cold starry night / Whatever your belief / The phoenix will take flight / Over the seas of grief /…

— May Sarton

For poetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in…

— May Sarton

The creative person, the person who moves from an irrational source of power, has to face the fact that this power antagonizes.…

— May Sarton

“When I speak of life and love as expanding with age, sex seems the least important thing. At any age we grow…

— May Sarton

We saw the strong trees struggle and their plumes do down, The poplar bend and whip back till it split to fall,…

— May Sarton

“Laura opened her eyes, feeling like a stranger in her own garden. But if she was a stranger here, where was home?…

— May Sarton

“I loved them in the way one loves at any age — if it’s real at all — obsessively, painfully, with wild…

— May Sarton

“Old age is really a disguise that no one but the old themselves see through. I feel exactly as I always did,…

— May Sarton

What frightens me about America today is that in the large majority there is no active sense of the value of the…

— May Sarton

I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament…

— May Sarton

“Now I become myself. It's taken Time, may years and places; I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people's faces, Run…

— May Sarton