May Sarton Quotes

So how can you lose what you've never owned?

We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.

The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.

The easiest way to lose something is to want it too badly.

Gather the stars if you wish it so Gather the songs and keep them. Gather the faces of women. Gather for keeping years and years. And then... Loosen your hands, let go and say good-bye. Let the stars and songs go. Let the faces and years go. Loosen your hands and say good-bye.

I don't believe people let things slide away. It's the nature of the universe that everything dissolves into oblivion and by every route possible, but human beings invest a lot of cleverness trying to cling to past events, real or imagined. And because we can't succeed, we get angry and frustrated and feel guilty. Except the Buddhists.

I saw that nothing was permanent. You don't want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it.

No man can lose what he never had.

Never love something so much that you can't let go of it.

You have to leave things that you love.

The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.

If you acquire things, you have to let them go.

So we're in this process of letting go of our own attachments to our physical forms and to the people we love, and... basically everything. Life is like this one big process of letting go.

Our being is continually undergoing and entering upon changes. ... We must, strictly speaking, at every moment give each other up and let each other go and not hold each other back.

This is going to be a hard task for you, first to attain and then to lose - because you can lose only something which you possess. If you don't possess it, how can you lose it?

If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have?

To renounce things is not to give them up. It is to acknowledge that all things go away.

We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us.

Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose

It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go.

Whatever you can lose, you should reckon of no account.

Never say about anything, "I have lost it," but only "I have given it back." Is your child dead? It has been given back. Is your wife dead? She has been returned.

I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.

The sense of loss is such a tricky one, because we always feel like our worth is tied up into stuff that we have, not that our worth can grow with things we are willing to lose.