"The beginner hugs his infant poem to him and does not want it to grow up. But you may have to break your poem to remake it."
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Quote collection
May Sarton quotes (page 11 of 14)
275 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"For after all we make our faces as we go along."
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"all great people are humble because great people have great work and are humbled by the largeness of their dreams."
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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."
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"Unless the gentle inherit the earth, / There will be no earth."
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"I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life."
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"Words are my passion / And out of them and me / I would create beauty."
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"Being very rich as far as I am concerned is having a margin. The margin is being able to give."
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"It's extraordinary how little two people can understand each other and how cruel two people who are fond of each other can be to each other - there is practically no cruelty so awful because their power to hurt is so great."
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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."
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"The hardest thing we are asked to do in this world is to remain aware of suffering, suffering about which we can do nothing."
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"What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation."
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"Fighting dragons is my holy joy."
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"I find that when I have any appointment, even an afternoon one, it changes the whole quality of time. I feel overcharged. There is no space for what wells up from the subconscious; those dreams and images live in deep still water and simply submerge when the day gets scattered."
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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."
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"I am furious at all the letters to answer, when all I want to do is think and write poems. ... I long for open time, with no obligations except toward the inner world and what is going on there."
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"He [the cat] wound himself around her legs, purring the purr of ardent desire like a kettle coming to a boil and then bubbling very fast."
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"Gardening is the instrument of grace."
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"The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up."
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"We have to believe that every person counts, counts as a creative force that can move mountains."
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