Joy, happiness… we do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections,… to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness, to some extent, isolates.

About May Sarton

Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995), known by the pen name May Sarton, was a Belgian and American novelist, poet, and memoirist. Notably, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her writing in 1965, a time when it was highly unusual to do so.

More quotations from May Sarton

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

—May Sarton

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow cycles of nature, is a help.

—May Sarton

patience nature

Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?

—May Sarton

My home is not a place, it is people.

—May Sarton

home

There is only one real deprivation… and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.

—May Sarton

History

22 Feb 2015 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

Joy, happiness . . . we do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections, . . . to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness, to some extent, isolates.