May Sarton

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.

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius. Think of the capacity to learn! The freshness, the temperament, the will of a baby a few months old!

In the country of pain we are each alone.

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

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

No partner in a love relationship... should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.

Women are at last becoming persons first and wives second, and that is as it should be.

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

In a total work, the failures have their not unimportant place.

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

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.

Self-respect is nothing to hide behind. When you need it most it isn't there.

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

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

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

True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

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

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.

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

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