Quotes from May Sarton

You will always be here with me; As long as I live, A towering figure of love.

It is the privilege of those who fear love to murder those who do not fear it!

Is it perhaps the one necessity of love, that it be needed? And the one great human tragedy that it so rarely is?

The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude, then clusters when there is hardly time to breathe.

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.

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.

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.

Most people have to talk so they won't hear.

Excellence costs a great deal.

Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.

A good marriage shuts out a very great deal.

After all, cats are the only untamed pets that we have. You cannot tame a cat.

Why should it happen that among the great many women whom I see and am fond of, suddenly somebody I meet for half an hour opens the door into poetry?

A house that does not have one worn, comfy chair in it is soulless.

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.

It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it.

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

I simply adore being alone - I find it a consuming thirst - and when that thirst is slaked, then I am happy.

When it comes to the important things one is always alone.

How much hope, expectation, and sheer hard work goes into the smallest success! There is no being sure of anything except that whatever has been created will change in time.

Women's work is always toward wholeness.

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.