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Life Quotes by May Sarton

38 Life quotes by May Sarton

All Life quotes May Sarton’s page

For art is order, but it is born out of the chaos of life, showing how creativity can rise from mess and still feel calm. She also says that joy does not depend on age, that each day should mix discipline with playful foolishness, and that trusting death can bring a new kind of freedom.

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life is always bringing unexpected gifts.

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For art is order, but it is born out of the chaos of life.

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If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be?

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poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.

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

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Without anxiety life would have very little savor.

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Family life! The United Nations is child's play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand and forgive in any…

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

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I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.

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The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though…

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Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude, then a cluster when there is hardly time to breathe.

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“It is time I came back to my real life After this voyage to an island with no name, Where I lay…

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Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some…

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“I am not ready to die, But I am learning to trust death As I have trusted life. I am moving Toward…

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“There were moments when Hilary saw life as tending always towards chaos, when it seemed that all one could be asked was…

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I asked myself the question, 'What do you want of your life?' and I realized with a start of recognition and terror,…

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There were moments ... when it seemed that all one could be asked was just to keep the ashtrays clean, the bed…

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We have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by…

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

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It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning, but when we can…

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“Sometimes I imagine life itself as merely a long preparation and waiting, a long darkness of growth toward these adventures of the…

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“Still, a person who cannot express love is stopping the flow of life, is censoring where censorship is a form of self-indulgence,…

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Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We…

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For of course one is never safe when in love. Growth is demanding and may seem dangerous, for there is loss as…

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

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It is harder for women, perhaps to be 'one-pointed,' much harder for them to clear space around whatever it is they want…

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If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an…

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“I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my “real” life again at last. That is what…

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“...Failure cannot be erased. It is built in to a life and helps us grow. Failure cannot be erased, but it can…

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“The sheer vital energy of the Woolfs always astonishes me when I stop to consider what they accomplished on any given day.…

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A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

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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…

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One thing is certain, and I have always known it - the joys of my life have nothing to do with age.…

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Am I too old, perhaps, ever to take in another's life to share with mine on a permanent basis? If so, I…

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And I refuse to feel guilty about not letter-writing either. There are times when one can, times when one can't. In the…

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I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seed every spring…

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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…

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May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best - out of it we try to fashion the…

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More by May Sarton

“I felt pain like an assault, The old pain again When the world thrusts itself inside, When we have to take in the outside,…

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

People who cannot feel punish those who do.

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…

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Real joy is becoming exceedingly rare among artists of any kind. And I have an idea that those who can and do communicate it…

For to be desperate is to discover strength. / We die of comfort and by conflict live.

“I see you with that shell Held to your sensitive abstracted ear, Hunting the ocean’s rumor till you hear it well, Until you can…

There is a wilder solitude in winter When every sense is pricked alive and keen.

I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope…

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

Innocence is not pure so much as pleased, Always expectant, bright-eyed, self-enclosed

I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.

For art is order, but it is born out of the chaos of life.

all great people are humble because great people have great work and are humbled by the largeness of their dreams.