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Absence becomes the greatest Presence.

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
Absence
Presence
Becomes
Greatest

More quotes by 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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Once more I realize that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one's self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.
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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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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Poems like to have a destination for their flight. They are homing pigeons.
May Sarton
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I sometimes imagine that as one grows older one comes to live a role which as a young person one merely 'played.
May Sarton
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You can't plan for a seizure of feeling, and for this reason I put everything else aside when I'm inspired.
May Sarton
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May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best - out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant that is what matters.
May Sarton
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Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward the light.
May Sarton
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I tell the gods are still alive / And they are not consoling.
May Sarton
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a poet never feels useful.
May Sarton
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The more our bodies fail us, the more naked and more demanding is the spirit, the more open and loving we can become if we are not afraid of what we are and of what we feel. I am not a phoenix yet, but here among the ashes, it may be that the pain is chiefly that of new wings trying to push through.
May Sarton
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... love is healing, even rootless love.
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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For to be desperate is to discover strength. / We die of comfort and by conflict live.
May Sarton
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Read between the lines.Then meet me in the silence if you can.
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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She became for me an island of light, fun, wisdom where I could run with my discoveries and torments and hopes at any time of day and find welcome.
May Sarton
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Family life! The United Nations is child's play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand and forgive in any family.
May Sarton
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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