At Seventy Quotes

“In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“The hardest thing we are asked to do in this world is to remain aware of suffering, suffering about which we can do nothing. Every human instinct is to turn away. Not see. It is, I’m afraid, exemplified by Reagan who refuses to imagine the suffering of twelve million unemployed and the degradation of men and women who are deprived of work and treated in this country like pariahs.”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“There is always some sleight of hand going on in writing autobiography. So much has to be left out, especially things that might hurt or dismay people. But in a novel one can say everything. The novel is often autobiography distilled and / or transcended.”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“One thing is certain, and I have always known it—the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about …”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“Here in the United States we appear to be becoming more and more a country devoted to amenities for the rich, more and more neglectful of the poor.”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“Adventures may be for the adventurous, but home is where the real things are sown and reaped, where in the end the real things happen. They”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“unless we recognize the radical nature of Christianity, which means shedding the imperatives of the secular world and taking with extreme seriousness the imperatives of God, we are kidding ourselves.”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“took it as a lesson that”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“I believe that our chief responsibility is not to change others for the better but to change ourselves.”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“I know that she is brave and handling her terribly restricted life with great courage and reaching out wherever she can to life. But I’m afraid I am not a viable subject for her to take on and redeem.”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“All seaside places have something of the same atmosphere”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“The autumn of life is also a matter of saying farewell”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“South Africa”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“Often I feel that tending the garden is a selfish occupation”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“Alyse Gregory’s journal”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“love alone has reality”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“August is the dead end of summer”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“What kept me going was”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“So the garden is perhaps irrelevant as an ethical compulsion. No one but me really sees this garden”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“The subject is treated with sensitivity and tact”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“face without lines that shows no mark of what has been lived through in a long life suggests something unlived”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“The garden is an obsession at this season”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“sometimes feel old these days when I am suddenly made aware of the little time ahead. It came to me with a sharp pang when I found myself saying”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“There is a sort of shame in naked pain. I used to see it in my patients when I was working in psychology and nursing. They found it more seemly”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“This garden is really too demanding for me at this stage in my life”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“Nearing fifty”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“leitmotiv.”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“His family feared that he was turning everything upside down”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“I realize that seventy must seem extremely old to my young friends”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal