May Sarton

“We are all, in the last analysis, alone. And this basic state of solitude is not something we have any choice about.”

“Each day one is reborn. Each day one must begin again.”

“Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.”

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

“Now I become myself. It's taken time, many years and places.”

“The reasons for depression are not so interesting as the way one handles it, simply to stay alive.”

“Love is a great beautifier.”

“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.”

“A house that does not have one worn, comfy chair in it is soulless.”

“True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.”

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

“Gardening is an instrument of grace.”

“Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help.”

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

“I am here to live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.”

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