Sarton, May quotes
1912 American Poet NovelistThe 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.
Sarton, May
Creativity
There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one s gifts to those one loves most.
Sarton, May
Giving
Self-respect is nothing to hide behind. When you need it most it isn t there.
Sarton, May
Self-respect
It is the privilege of those who fear love to murder those who do not fear it!
Sarton, May
Love
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.
Sarton, May
Privacy
We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.
Sarton, May
Risk
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.
Sarton, May
Talent
Most people have to talk so they won t hear.
Sarton, May
Speakers and Speaking
It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.
Sarton, May
Argument
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
Sarton, May
Heroes and Heroism