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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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Am I too old, perhaps, ever to take in another's life to share with mine on a permanent basis? If so, I must make do with what I have... and what I have is a great richness of friends and a positively ardent love of nature. Not nothing!
May Sarton
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It is always hard to hear the buried truth from another person.
May Sarton
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How much hope, expectation, and sheer hard work goes into the smallest success! There is no being sure of anything except that whatever has been created will change in time.
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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I suppose one has to remember that 'life' is important too, though it's something I forget in some moods, everything except work seeming like an interruption or really non-life.
May Sarton
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At some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.
May Sarton
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I am realizing once and for all the difference as far as I am concerned of women and men and the necessity for both. With a man, however tender he is, one is feeding him - one is always and eternally understanding, mothering, supplying him with faith in himself (not in you).
May Sarton
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People who cannot feel punish those who do.
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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It is sometimes the most fragile things that have the power to endure and become sources of strength.
May Sarton
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a poet never feels useful.
May Sarton
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I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.
May Sarton
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It is clear that we do not exactly choose our poems our poems choose us.
May Sarton
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What can I have that I still want?
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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The tragic thing about learning from experience is I fear that one can only learn from one's own experience. Other people's - other nations' - experiences simply do not help. They can be imaginatively learned from. But people do not act on other people's experiences.
May Sarton
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There the door is always open into the “holy” — growth, birth, death.
May Sarton
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So this was fame at last! Nothing but a vast debt to be paid to the world in energy, blood, and time.
May Sarton
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The only way through pain…is to absorb, probe, understand exactly what it is and what it means. To close the door on pain is to miss the chance for growth.
May Sarton
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In the country of pain we are each alone.
May Sarton