May Sarton

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.

The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.

There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.

Excellence costs a great deal.

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

For inside all the weakness of old age the spirit God knows is as mercurial as it ever was.

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

What is destructive is impatience haste expecting too much too fast.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always she had to admit interesting.

Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers.

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.

Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?

Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.

Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another.

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

I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love.

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.

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.