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
Spirit
Wings
Become
Fail
Phoenix
Body
Loving
Chiefly
May
Failing
Demanding
Feel
Among
Ashes
Feels
Afraid
Push
Trying
Open
Bodies
Pain
Naked

More quotes by May Sarton

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Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another.
May Sarton
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I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.
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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Poetry is a dangerous profession between conflict and resolution, between feeling and thought, between becoming and being, between the ultra-personal and the universal - and these balances are shifting all the time.
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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Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything - except itself.
May Sarton
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“How does one grow up?” I asked a friend the other day. There was a slight pause then she answered, “By thinking.”
May Sarton
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About loving, I have little to learn from the young.
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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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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It is always hard to hear the buried truth from another person.
May Sarton
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Where music thundered let the mind be still, Where the will triumphed let there be no will, What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.
May Sarton
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I’m only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.
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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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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Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?
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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The value of solitude - one of its values - is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within, just as there is nothing to help balance at times of particular stress or depression.
May Sarton
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Light is snow sifted / To an abstraction.
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