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

More quotes by May Sarton

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We are all, whether we know it or not, in search of a way to enrich, to drink during the fizz, to inhale deeper our gifts, in a desperation for some little understanding before death.
May Sarton
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One could go on revising a prose page forever whereas there is a point in a poem when one knows it is done forever.
May Sarton
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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
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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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Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite.
May Sarton
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Miracles cannot be explained, that is their miraculous nature.
May Sarton
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It is always hard to hear the buried truth from another person.
May Sarton
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This suspension of one's own reality, this being entirely alone in a strange city (at times I wondered if I had lost the power of speech) is an enriching state for a writer. Then the written word ... takes on an intensity of its own. Nothing gets exteriorized or dissipated all is concentrated within.
May Sarton
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Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.
May Sarton
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I write poems about relationships, love relationships, and I'm not able to do that all the time. I could go two years without writing poems, and then write a dozen. Having a novel to work on, with the intricate puzzle of character and plot to work out, is satisfying for the time there is no poetry.
May Sarton
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I suppose I envy painters because they can meditate on form and structure, on color and light, and not concern themselves with human torment and chaos. It is restful even to imagine expression without words.
May Sarton
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There the door is always open into the “holy” — growth, birth, death.
May Sarton
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True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.
May Sarton
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The body is a universe in itself and must be held as sacred as anything in creation....It is dangerous to forget the body as sacramental.
May Sarton
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If I were to choose one single thing that that would restore Paris to the senses, it would be that strangely sweet, unhealthy smell of the Métro, so very unlike the dank cold or the stuffy heat of subways in New York.
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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Human relations just are not fixed in their orbits like the planets -- they're more like galaxies, changing all the time, exploding into light for years, then dying away.
May Sarton
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Women are at last becoming persons first and wives second, and that is as it should be.
May Sarton
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letters are so much easier than living. One can give one's best.
May Sarton
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Read between the lines.Then meet me in the silence if you can.
May Sarton