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One does not find oneself by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine. . . who one is and wants to be.

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
Wants
Learning
Else
Doe
Pursuing
Find
Routine
Self
Contrary
Something
Oneself
Discipline

More quotes by May Sarton

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Light is snow sifted / To an abstraction.
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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People who cannot feel punish those who do.
May Sarton
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I believe that children long for form just as grownups do, and that it releases rather than cramps creative energy.
May Sarton
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There the door is always open into the “holy” — growth, birth, death.
May Sarton
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The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.
May Sarton
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There is a wilder solitude in winter When every sense is pricked alive and keen.
May Sarton
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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?
May Sarton
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In the novel or the journal you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival.
May Sarton
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Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another.
May Sarton
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I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward
May Sarton
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Miracles cannot be explained, that is their miraculous nature.
May Sarton
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More than any other beauty (though it is true of all beauty except in art) passion seems to me to have the seeds of its own destruction in it.
May Sarton
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We cannot afford not to fight for growth and understanding, even when it is painful, as it is bound to be.
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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Poetry is a dangerous profession between conflict and resolution, between feeling and thought, between becoming and being, between the ultra-personal and the universal - and these balances are shifting all the time.
May Sarton
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Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.
May Sarton
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I’m only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.
May Sarton
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We only keep what we lose.
May Sarton
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Go rich in poverty. Go rich in poetry. This nothingness is plentitude.
May Sarton