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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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May Sarton
Age: 83 †
Born: 1912
Born: May 3
Died: 1995
Died: July 16
Diarist
Poet
Writer
May Eleanor Sarton
Painful
Fight
Growth
Understanding
Fighting
Cannot
Afford
Even
Bound
Bounds

More quotes by May Sarton

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One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
May Sarton
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Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places.
May Sarton
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Routine is not a prison, but the way into freedom from time.
May Sarton
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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
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Love is our human miracle.
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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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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I have never written a book that was not born out of a question I needed to answer for myself.
May Sarton
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The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.
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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For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was.
May Sarton
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What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.
May Sarton
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Inside my mother's death / I lay and could not breathe.
May Sarton
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It is always hard to hear the buried truth from another person.
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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It takes a long time for words to become thought.
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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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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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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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