May Sarton quotes - Page : 2

" It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting. " # Argument # Quarrels # Love

" It is the privilege of those who fear love to murder those who do not fear it! " # Love # Fear # Murder

" May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best -- out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters. " # Privacy # Fashion # Life and Living

" Most people have to talk so they won't hear. " # Speakers and Speaking

" A man with a talent does what is expected of him, makes his way, constructs, is an engineer, a composer, a builder of bridges. It's the natural order of things that he construct objects outside himself and his family. The woman who does so is aberrant. We have to expiate for this cursed talent someone handed out to us, by mistake, in the black mystery of genetics. " # Talent # Mistakes # Family

" The creative person, the person who moves from an irrational source of power, has to face the fact that this power antagonizes. Under all the superficial praise of the creative is the desire to kill. It is the old war between the mystic and the nonmystic, a war to the death. " # Creativity # War # Death and Dying

" One does not 'find oneself' by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine . . . who one is and wants to be. " # Self-discipline # Discipline # Learning

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

" I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward. " # Age and Aging