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.

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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.

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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!

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

In the country of pain we are each alone.

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton

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

- May Sarton