Explore some of the best and insightful Sylvia Plath quotes, sayings, and poetry on love, life, depression and more.
Sylvia Plath was a renowned American poet and writer known for her poetry, novels, and short stories. Her writing is deeply emotional and vivid, often reflecting her personal experiences and struggles, particularly with mental illness.
Some of her best-known works, including the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the novel The Bell Jar, beautifully express a sense of alienation and self-destruction that has resonated with many readers since the mid-20th century.
Sylvia Plath died by suicide at the age of 30 on February 11, 1963. And, Plath’s literary fame only arrived after her death. Her work today remains very influential and is widely appreciated across the globe. In 1982, she also won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Collected Poems, published in 1981, almost 20 years after her death.
I have listed some of my favourite quotes from her poems, books, and work that I found deep, profound and great for living a meaningful life.
Top 10 Sylvia Plath Quotes
- “Is there no way out of the mind?” ― Sylvia Plath
sylvia plath - “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” — Sylvia Plath
sylvia plath quote - “I talk to God, but the sky is empty.” ― Sylvia Plath
sylvia plath quotations - “I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.” — Sylvia Plath
sylvia plath quotes - “If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.” — Sylvia Plath
quotes by sylvia plath - “But life is long. And it is the long run that balances the short flare of interest and passion.” — Sylvia Plath
- “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
sylvia plath the bell jar quotes - “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” — Sylvia Plath
- “The hardest thing is to live richly in the present without letting it be tainted out of fear for the future or regret for the past.” — Sylvia Plath
- “I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life.” — Sylvia Plath
Famous Quotes By Sylvia Plath
- “Mountains terrify me – they just sit about; they are so proud.” – Sylvia Plath
- “I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.” — Sylvia Plath
- “I must bridge the gap between adolescent glitter and mature glow.” — Sylvia Plath
- “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.” — Sylvia Plath
- “What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.” — Sylvia Plath
- “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “And there’s the fallacy of existence: the idea that one could behappy forever and age with a given situation or series of accomplishments.” — Sylvia Plath
- “Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call.” — Sylvia Plath
- “You have to be able to make a real creative life for yourself, before you can expect anyone else to provide one ready-made for you.” — Sylvia Plath
- “Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming?” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
- “It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative – whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.” — Sylvia Plath
- “I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath Quotes On Love
- “‘If you love her,’ I said, ‘you’ll love somebody else someday.’” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “How we need another soul to cling to.” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
- “What a man is is an arrow into the future, and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.” — Sylvia Plath
- “I have room in me for love. And forever so many little lives.” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
- “Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “If they substituted the word ‘Lust’ for ‘Love’ in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
- “I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
- “There I went again, building up a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met me, and all out of a few prosy nothings.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “Love is a desperate artifice to take the place of those two original parents who turned out not to be omnisciently right gods.” — Sylvia Plath
- “Perhaps someday I’ll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.” — Sylvia Plath
Sad Sylvia Plath Quotes On Life
- “I am too pure for you or anyone.” ― Sylvia Plath
- “I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.” — Sylvia Plath
- “Freedom is not of use to those who do not know how to employ it.” — Sylvia Plath
- “Kiss me and you will see how important I am.” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
- “There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.” — Sylvia Plath
- “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “One should be able to control and manipulate experiences with an informed and intelligent mind.” — Sylvia Plath
- “So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them.”— Sylvia Plath
- “A little thing, like children putting flowers in my hair, can fill up the widening cracks in my self-assurance like soothing lanolin.” — Sylvia Plath
- “My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.” — Sylvia Plath
- “And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
- “I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “Life has been a combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning.” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
More About Sylvia Plath’s Life
Born: 27 October 1932, Boston, United States
Died: 11 February 1963 (age 30 years)
Spouse: Ted Hughes
Sylvia Plath’s Most Famous Poems and Books
- The Collected Poems
- The Journals of Sylvia Plath
- Crossing the Water
- Ariel
- Daddy
- The Bell Jar
- The Colossus
- Winter Trees
Some notable poems by Sylvia Plath include “Lady Lazarus,” “Mirror,” “The Applicant,” “Tulips,” “The Bell Jar,” and “Morning Song.” These poems often explore themes such as identity, mental illness, gender roles, and the complexities of human relationships.
Despite her tragic departure, her words continue to captivate audiences, to the enduring power of literature to provoke thought and stir the heart.
Feel free to share with friends and family on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Pinterest, and more to spread some wise words of wisdom and share your feelings in words.
