May Sarton Quotes

It seems essential to try to find some meaning to life and I guess Jungian philosophy is the one that's helped me understand myself and the world more than anything else.

One of my favorite books is 'Man's Search for Meaning.'

And remembering how those very beliefs had repelled me and had seemed meaningless when professed by people whose lives conflicted with them, and how these same beliefs attracted me and seemed reasonable when I saw that people lived in accord with them, I understood why I had then rejected those beliefs and found them meaningless, yet now accepted them and found them full of meaning. I understood that I had erred, and why I erred. I had erred not so much because I thought incorrectly, as because I lived badly. I understood that it was not an error in my thought that had hid truth from me, as much as my life itself in the exceptional conditions of epicurean gratification of desires in which I passed it. I understood that my question as to what my life is, and the answer, an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life; but I had referred it to life in general. I asked myself what my life is, and got the reply: An evil and an absurdity. And really my life—a life of indulgence of desires—was senseless and evil, and therefore the reply, “Life is evil and an absurdity,” referred only to my life, but not to human life in general.

The finest life is spent creating oneself, not procreating.

I know that I'm here - I believe that I'm here for a purpose. I believe in forces of fate.

You are not here to prove worthiness. You are here to extend the creation, creator, creating that you are.

When you know your not going to die, you have to ask yourself... What's the highest and best use for myself.

imagining anything is the first step toward creating it. Believing in a true self is what allows a true self to be born.

Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.

Education itself is a putting off, a postponement; we are told to work hard to get good results. Why? So we can get a good job. What is a good job? One that pays well. Oh. And that's it? All this suffering, merely so that we can earn a lot of money, which, even if we manage it, will not solve our problems anyway? It's a tragically limited idea of what life is all about.

I figured out in my thirties it was about 'what can I contribute'? And what I figured out about that is creating something from scratch, and connecting it to people.

Life is everything, and you haven't lived it properly until you believe.

What is the purpose of life? I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy.

I believe that all that we go through here must have some value.

But to believe that getting stuff is the purpose and aim of life is madness.

Many people know what they want to have, but have no idea of who they want to be. Getting 'things' simply will not fulfill you. Only living and doing what you believe is 'the right thing' will give you that sense of inner strength that we all deserve.

My definition of success is "the fulfillment of your soul's purpose."

She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.

Motherhood was the beginning of my own journey asking the question, 'Why am I here?' I had to stop and think: What am I doing to teach my daughter? What do I believe in?

I have so strong a sense of creation, of tomorrow, that I cannot get drunk, knowing I will be less alive, less well, less creative the next day.

I believe that the reason of life is for each of us simply to grow in love.

Life without an ideal is spiritual death.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.