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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
Something
Oneself
Discipline
Wants
Learning
Else
Doe
Pursuing
Find
Routine
Self
Contrary
More quotes by May Sarton
A body without bones would be a limp impossible mess, so a day without steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic.
May Sarton
When I am alone the flowers are really seen I can pay attention to them. They are felt as presences. Without them I would die...they change before my eyes. They live and die in a few days they keep me closely in touch with the process, with growth, and also with dying. I am floated on their moments.
May Sarton
...I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except when I'm making love. Two things when you forget time, when nothing exists except the moment--the moment of writing, the moment of love. That perfect concentration is bliss.
May Sarton
... the reason why there are so few first-class poets is that many people have intense feelings or first-class minds but to get the two together so that you will be willing to put a poem through sixty drafts, to be that self-critical, to keep breaking it down, that is what is rare. Right now most poetry is just self-indulgence.
May Sarton
letters are so much easier than living. One can give one's best.
May Sarton
Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.
May Sarton
For of course one is never safe when in love. Growth is demanding and may seem dangerous, for there is loss as well as gain in growth. But why go on living if one has ceased to grow? And what more demanding atmosphere for growth than love in any form, than any relationship which can call out and requires of us our most secret and deepest selves?
May Sarton
Poems like to have a destination for their flight. They are homing pigeons.
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 ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.
May Sarton
Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.
May Sarton
When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.
May Sarton
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
Routine is not a prison, but the way into freedom from time.
May Sarton
Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd.
May Sarton
I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward
May Sarton
There was such a thing as women's work and it consisted chiefly, Hilary sometimes thought, in being able to stand constant interruption and keep your temper. . . .
May Sarton
And one cold starry night / Whatever your belief / The phoenix will take flight / Over the seas of grief / To sing her thrilling song / To stars and waves and sky / For neither old nor young / The phoenix does not die.
May Sarton
About loving, I have little to learn from the young.
May Sarton
Read between the lines.Then meet me in the silence if you can.
May Sarton
