May Sarton

In the country of pain we are each alone.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.

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.

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

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

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