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.
May SartonRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reflections on the past can bring both pain and growth.
This quote highlights the dual nature of revisiting past experiences during introspection. While memories can evoke feelings of shame and pain, they also provide valuable insights and lessons that contribute to personal growth and understanding.
Themes
ReflectionGrowthPastMistakesInsight
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop on personal development, the speaker quoted May Sarton to emphasize the importance of learning from our past.
More from May Sarton
All quotes βPain can make a whole winter bright, like fever, force us to live deep and hard.
May SartonRead
She became for me an island of light, fun, wisdom where I could run with my discoveries and torments and hopes at any time of day and find welcome.
May SartonRead
Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.
May SartonRead
Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We have now arrived at a stage in life so rich in new perceptions that cannot be transmitted to those at another stage - one feels at the same time full of so much gentleness and so much despair - the enigma of this life grows, grows, drowns one and crushes one, then all of a sudden in a supreme moment of light one becomes aware of the sacred.
May SartonRead
I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep.... Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.
May SartonRead
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Joseph CampbellRead
I believe that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning. A brain without a body could not think.
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Hate, like prayer, changes the person involved in the activity, not the person the activity is aimed at.
John TempletonRead
There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.
Samuel GompersRead
I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.
PlatoRead
Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true.
James M. BarrieRead