"We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be"
About this Quote
Daring, in May Sarton’s hands, isn’t a cinematic leap; it’s a daily discipline. The line rejects the feel-good version of authenticity that sells selfhood as a brand upgrade. Sarton makes it riskier: being yourself is not only hard because society disapproves, but because the self, honestly encountered, may be “frightening or strange.” That twist matters. It implies the biggest obstacle to “being real” isn’t other people’s judgment so much as the private terror of what you might find when you stop performing.
The phrasing is quietly coercive in a poet’s way. “We have to” frames self-knowledge as obligation, not lifestyle choice. Then “dare” relocates identity from essence to action: the self is something you do, and doing it requires nerve. The conditional “may prove to be” adds a forensic chill, as if the self is evidence revealed over time. You don’t get to pre-approve what authenticity will look like.
Context deepens the stakes. Sarton wrote across decades when women artists were praised for decorum and punished for candor, and when lesbian identity, solitude, ambition, and mental strain were often treated as defects rather than dimensions. Her journals and poems circle isolation and interior life, insisting that inwardness isn’t indulgence but a site of truth. Read that way, the quote is less a greeting-card mantra than a warning label: selfhood comes with shadows, and the bargain is still worth it.
The phrasing is quietly coercive in a poet’s way. “We have to” frames self-knowledge as obligation, not lifestyle choice. Then “dare” relocates identity from essence to action: the self is something you do, and doing it requires nerve. The conditional “may prove to be” adds a forensic chill, as if the self is evidence revealed over time. You don’t get to pre-approve what authenticity will look like.
Context deepens the stakes. Sarton wrote across decades when women artists were praised for decorum and punished for candor, and when lesbian identity, solitude, ambition, and mental strain were often treated as defects rather than dimensions. Her journals and poems circle isolation and interior life, insisting that inwardness isn’t indulgence but a site of truth. Read that way, the quote is less a greeting-card mantra than a warning label: selfhood comes with shadows, and the bargain is still worth it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Love |
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