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Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath Quotes

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Famous Sylvia Plath Quotes

“When I was nineteen, pureness was the great issue. Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn’t, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another.”

PeopleMenWorldPersonsBlackDifferencesWhiteIssuesSawsRepublicanMen And WomenCatholicDemocratSignificantDividedWhite ManProtestantsNineteenPureness
Book:the bell jar
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“I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near unto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don't believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.”

PeopleWayFeelsBelieveFeltWaterHoursReligiousGrowingNew YorkHolyPureHotLaysJazzDon't BelieveHotelBathsJordanBaptismTubsHoly WaterHot Baths
Book:the bell jar
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“So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever.”

PeopleLooksNightDarkWalksTreeLonelinessColdEasierMoonBlueShiningCleverSnowFallenTonightSilverJealousEvery NightSparkleDark Trees
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“…'It always has to end, doesn't it? We always have to separate.' 'Yes,' I said. He was insistent, 'But it doesn't always have to be that way. We could be together some day for always.' 'Oh, no,' I told him, wondering if he knew it was all over. 'We keep running till we die. We separate, get further apart, till we are dead.”

IfsWaySaidEndsRunningTogetherDiesWonderKeep Running
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“I can't deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.”

IfsWellsMayMadeI CanRealMatterCharacterLightPastRoomsFateEmptySuicideCommitRealizationClockElectricDeceivingShellsCheerfulEnthusiasticBrillianceStarksYour RoomElectric LightClock TickingEmpty Shell
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence. Of the millions, I, too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped, by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living — a set of values.”

ThinkingTwoMatterFactsValuesBeliefRealizingAbilityExistenceMillionsEnvironmentSeaBirthFindingsStandardsUltimateSatisfactionDefinedLive ByShallowHeredity
Book:The Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“Sure, I’m dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself.”

WayWritingTryingYearsAbleLyingEnergyGrowsGoes OnEdgesCoreMy WayDramaticNervesYellowCynicalLeisureSentimentalMy ThoughtsMistLiving OnBlacknessMake OutLooking DownWindySlimeLiving On The Edge
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“But I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of 'I' that I can hardly bear to think of it. I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession. The pen scratching on the paper…I…I…I…I…I…I.”

ThinkingI CanTwoThreeLinesMillionsSpecialBearsProudPaperLettersVarietyFirmPensStrokesSuccessionReassuringVerticalAssertiveHorizontalHorizontal Lines
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“…* to learn that money makes life smooth in some ways, and to feel how tight and threadbare life is if you have too little. * to despise money, which is a farce, mere paper, and to hate what you have to do for it, and yet to long to have it in order to be free from slaving for it. * to yearn toward art, music, ballet and good books, and get them only in tantalizing snatches.”

IfsWayFeelsLittlesLongArtBookLife IsHateOrderPaperMereBalletDespiseSmoothGood BookFarceArt MusicTantalizing
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“* to know a lot of people I love pieces of, and to want to synthesize those pieces in me somehow, be it by painting or writing. * to know that millions of others are unhappy and that life is a gentleman's agreement to grin and paint your face gay so others will feel they are silly to be unhappy, and try to catch the contagion of joy, while inside so many are dying of bitterness and unfulfillment.”

PeopleKnowsWantFeelsWritingTryingFacesLife IsJoyMillionsPiecesDyingPaintingGayPaintSillyUnhappyGentlemanAgreementYour FaceBitternessContagionUnfulfillment
Author:Sylvia Plath
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