Quote

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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May Sarton
Age: 83 †
Born: 1912
Born: May 3
Died: 1995
Died: July 16
Diarist
Poet
Writer
May Eleanor Sarton
Trying
Open
Bodies
Pain
Naked
Spirit
Wings
Become
Fail
Phoenix
Body
Loving
Chiefly
May
Failing
Demanding
Feel
Among
Ashes
Feels
Afraid
Push

More quotes by 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 asked myself the question, 'What do you want of your life?' and I realized with a start of recognition and terror, 'Exactly what I have - but to be commensurate, to handle it all better.
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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There is a wilder solitude in winter When every sense is pricked alive and keen.
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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A house that does not have one warm, comfy chair in it is soulless.
May Sarton
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It is a waste of time to see people who have only a social surface to show. I will make every effort to find out the real person, but if I can't, then I am upset and cross. Time wasted is poison.
May Sarton
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When addressed, a Gentleman Cat does not move a muscle. He looks as if he hasn't heard.
May Sarton
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We only keep what we lose.
May Sarton
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It is possible, I suppose, that we are returning to a Dark Age. What is frightening is that violence is not only represented by nations, but everywhere walks among us freely.
May Sarton
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I sometimes think men don't 'hear' very well, if I take your meaning to be 'understand what is going on in a person.' That's what makes them so restful. Women wear each other out with their everlasting touching of the nerve.
May Sarton
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Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything - except itself.
May Sarton
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My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered by something one needs to understand, and can come to understand only through the characters in the imagined situation.
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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Gardening is an instrument of grace.
May Sarton
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each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature.
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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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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life is always bringing unexpected gifts.
May Sarton
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we are never done with thinking about our parents, I suppose, and come to know them better long after they are dead than we ever did when they were alive.
May Sarton