May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

People who cannot feel punish those who do.

— May Sarton

This suspension of one's own reality, this being entirely alone in a strange city (at times I wondered if I had lost…

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— May Sarton

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

— 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

People who are always thinking of the feelings of others can be very destructive because they are hiding so much from themselves.

— May Sarton

I am not a greedy person except about flowers and plants, and then I become fanatically greedy.

— May Sarton

In the garden the door is always open into the holy.

— May Sarton

Gardening is the instrument of grace.

— May Sarton

I believe that children long for form just as grownups do, and that it releases rather than cramps creative energy.

— May Sarton

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

— May Sarton

When you change the way you look at a thing, the thing itself changes...By mastering feelings, she had come to understand the…

— May Sarton

I am furious at all the letters to answer, when all I want to do is think and write poems. ... I…

— May Sarton

O cruel cloudless space, And pale bare ground where the poor infant lies! Why do we feel restored As in a sacramental…

— May Sarton