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

“In the midst of winter I discovered that there was in me an invincible summer,” as Camus said.”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

“I 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, as I have done every spring for years, Housman's

And since I look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodland I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow

But I have at most ten or fifteen springs! Is that possible? Almost a lifetime gone. On the other side though, what do I have is seventy springs in my head, and they flow back with all their riches now.”
― 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, and goldfinches darting about...”
― May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal

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

“Once more I realize acutely that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one’s self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.”
― 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