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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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May Sarton
Age: 83 †
Born: 1912
Born: May 3
Died: 1995
Died: July 16
Diarist
Poet
Writer
May Eleanor Sarton
History
Preceded
Energies
Partly
Formal
Poems
Poem
Literature
Energy
Propelled

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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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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I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward
May Sarton
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Love is our human miracle.
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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If I were to choose one single thing that that would restore Paris to the senses, it would be that strangely sweet, unhealthy smell of the Métro, so very unlike the dank cold or the stuffy heat of subways in New York.
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
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Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.
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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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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People who cannot feel punish those who do.
May Sarton
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It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it.
May Sarton
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life is always bringing unexpected gifts.
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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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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I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.
May Sarton
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Though friendship is not quick to burn it is explosive stuff.
May Sarton
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Lunches are just not good. They take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning's work.
May Sarton
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Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another.
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