Home > Author > May Sarton
1 " We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be. "
― May Sarton
2 " The Fur Person learned then and there that it is better to be a philosopher than to be a king and that, all things considered, wisdom was to be preferred to power. "
― May Sarton , The Fur Person
3 " Where music thundered let the mind be still,Where the will triumphed let there be no will,What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill. "
4 " I am not ready to die,But I am learning to trust deathAs I have trusted life.I am movingToward a new freedom "
― May Sarton , Selected Poems
5 " Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd. "
6 " For any writer who wants to keep a journal, be alive to everything, not just to what you're feeling, but also to your pets, to flowers, to what you're reading. "
7 " I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love. "
8 " Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels. "
9 " Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite. "
10 " One has only to set a loved human being against the fact that we are all in peril all the time to get back a sense of proportion. What does anything matter compared to the reality of love and its span, so brief at best, maintained against such odds? "
― May Sarton , Journal of a Solitude
11 " If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine--why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as 'irrelevant'? "
12 " Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go. "
13 " So let the world go, but hold fast to joy. "
14 " But tears are an indulgence. Memory sings. "
15 " And now we who are writing women and strange monstersStill search our hearts to find the difficult answers,Still hope that we may learn to lay our handsMore gently and more subtly on the burning sands. "
16 " There are some griefs so loudThey could bring down the sky,And there are griefs so stillNone knows how deep they lie,Endured, never expended.There are old griefs so proudThey never speak a word;They never can be mended.And these nourish the willAnd keep it iron-hard. "
17 " ...The means of choice:She might choose to ascendThe falling dream,By some angelic power without a nameReverse the motion, plunge into upwardness,Know height without an end,Density melt to air, silence yield a voice--Within her fall she felt the pull of Grace. "
18 " A bolt that raised her heart to blazing heightAnd made the vertical the very thrust of hope,And found its path at last(Slow work of Grace). "
19 " ...when the petals fallSay it is beautiful and good, say it is well "
20 " It is time I came back to my real lifeAfter this voyage to an island with no name,Where I lay down at sunrise drunk with light. "
