"For any writer who wants to keep a journal, be alive to everything, not just to what you're feeling, but also to your pets, to flowers, to what you're reading."
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Quote collection
May Sarton quotes (page 3 of 14)
275 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself."
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"We saw the strong trees struggle and their plumes do down, The poplar bend and whip back till it split to fall, The elm tear up at the root and topple like a crown, The pine crack at the base - we had to watch them all. The ash, the lovely cedar. We had to watch them fall. They went so softly under the loud flails of air, Before that fury they went down like feathers, With all the hundred springs that flowered in their hair, and all the years, endured in all the weathers - To fall as if they were nothing, as if they were feathers."
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"One of the good elements of old age is that we no longer have to prove anything, to ourselves or to anyone else. We are what we are."
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"We cannot afford not to fight for growth and understanding, even when it is painful, as it is bound to be."
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"I suppose I have written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems to find out what I felt about something."
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"There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it."
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"We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment."
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"Gardening is an instrument of grace."
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"I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope and is always thrilling."
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"Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything - except itself."
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"It looks as if I were meant to be alone, and that any hope of happiness is not meant. Am I too old to acquire the knack for happiness?"
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"Innocence is not pure so much as pleased, Always expectant, bright-eyed, self-enclosed"
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"Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation"
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"What is there to do when people die - people so dear and rare - but bring them back by remembering?"
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"Love cannot exorcise the gifts of hate. / Hate cannot exorcize what has no weight, / But laughter we can never over-rate."
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"Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius."
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"There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much."
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"One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being."
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"When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach."
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