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
Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.
Interpretation
True peace comes from connecting with the natural world.
In this quote, May Sarton reflects on the profound sense of peace she experiences from feeling a connection to nature. She emphasizes that even a small recognition of our part in the natural world can foster tranquility and harmony within ourselves.
In practice
During a speech about mental health, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of nature in finding inner peace.
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.
Pain can make a whole winter bright, like fever, force us to live deep and hard.
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.
Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.
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.
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.
The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro.
I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole. I find nature as a whole disturbing. Nature can be harsh β difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn't walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying.
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself.
The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. [...] The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain.
On the batβs back I do fly After summer merrily.
What does autumn go on paying for with so much yellow money?
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