Quote

I can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it.

May Sarton

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May Sarton
Age: 83 †
Born: 1912
Born: May 3
Died: 1995
Died: July 16
Diarist
Poet
Writer
May Eleanor Sarton
Space
Nerves
Tell
Ghost
Past
Raises
Exposes
Soul
Solitude
Breathes
Done
Breathe
Exaltation
Work
Inner
Nerve
Never
Flow
Ghosts
Rest
Flows

More quotes by May Sarton

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The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.
May Sarton
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Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places.
May Sarton
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For to be desperate is to discover strength. / We die of comfort and by conflict live.
May Sarton
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She became for me an island of light, fun, wisdom where I could run with my discoveries and torments and hopes at any time of day and find welcome.
May Sarton
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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 weather, woe, or work can-if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough-be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being.
May Sarton
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The value of solitude - one of its values - is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within, just as there is nothing to help balance at times of particular stress or depression.
May Sarton
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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
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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.
May Sarton
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Read between the lines.Then meet me in the silence if you can.
May Sarton
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It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it.
May Sarton
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They are commiting murder who merely live.
May Sarton
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O cruel cloudless space, And pale bare ground where the poor infant lies! Why do we feel restored As in a sacramental place? Here Mystery is artifice, And here a vision of such peace is stored, Healing flows from it through our eyes.
May Sarton
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When addressed, a Gentleman Cat does not move a muscle. He looks as if he hasn't heard.
May Sarton
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I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.
May Sarton
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I feel happy to be keeping a journal again. I've missed it, missed naming things as they appear, missed the half hour when I push all duties aside and savor the experience of being alive in this beautiful place.
May Sarton
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Joy, happiness ... we do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections ... to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates.
May Sarton
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It feels a long way up and down from zero.
May Sarton
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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. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about
May Sarton
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I am not a greedy person except about flowers and plants, and then I become fanatically greedy.
May Sarton
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I sometimes imagine that as one grows older one comes to live a role which as a young person one merely 'played.
May Sarton