Yourcenar Quotes: top 51 famous quotes about Yourcenar

Yourcenar Quotes & Sayings

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Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul ... — Marguerite Yourcenar

To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tanatmount to constant travel: One is traveling with the earth. — Marguerite Yourcenar

But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone. — Marguerite Yourcenar

[On travel:] Who would be so besotted as to die without having made at least the round of this, his prison? — Marguerite Yourcenar

Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Suffering turns us into egotists, for it absorbs us completely: it is later, in the form of memory, that it teaches us compassion. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables. — Marguerite Yourcenar

The world is big ... May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure. — Marguerite Yourcenar

In the evenings the art of building gave way to that of music, which is architecture, too, though invisible. — Marguerite Yourcenar

I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Any happiness is a masterpiece. — Marguerite Yourcenar

There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Unquestionably it would have been Mary Magdalene who did the dishes at the Last Supper.
Concluded Marguerite Yourcenar. — David Markson

Water drunk more reverently still, from the hands or from the spring itself, diffuses within us the most secret salt of earth and the rain of heaven. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Books are not life, only its ashes. — Marguerite Yourcenar

I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others ... — Marguerite Yourcenar

For me, a poet is someone who is 'in contact.' Someone through whom a current is passing. — Marguerite Yourcenar

The world, which is sometimes too stern, compensates for its harshness with its inattention. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Translating is writing. — Marguerite Yourcenar

One is always punished out of season. — Marguerite Yourcenar

It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present. — Marguerite Yourcenar

That imperial guard which poets and humanists mount in relay around any great memory. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Every invalid is a prisoner. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Nothing is slower than the true birth of a man. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern. — Marguerite Yourcenar

And it was at about this time that I began to feel myself divine. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Leaving behind books is even more beautiful - there are far too many children. — Marguerite Yourcenar

If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory. Translation by David Downie — Marguerite Yourcenar

the lover who leaves reason in control does not follow his god to the end. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close. — Marguerite Yourcenar

It is not that I despise men. If I did I should have no right, and no reason, to try to govern. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Men who care passionately for women attach themselves at least as much to the temple and to the accessories of the cult as to their goddess herself. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one's self without thought of profit. — Marguerite Yourcenar

A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books. — Marguerite Yourcenar

I believe that friendship, like love, of which it is a particular kind, requires nearly as much art as a successful choreography. — Marguerite Yourcenar

We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief. — Marguerite Yourcenar

On the whole, however, it is only out of pride or gross ignorance, or cowardice, that we refuse to see in the present the lineaments of times to come. — Marguerite Yourcenar

A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Human beings betray their worst failings when they marvel to find that a world ruler is neither foolishly indolent, presumptuous, nor cruel. — Marguerite Yourcenar

One reads thousands of books, of poets, modern and ancient, as one meets thousands of people. What remains of it all is hard to tell. — Marguerite Yourcenar

No one understands eternity. One simply recognizes its existence. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Attianus had been right in his conjectures: the virgin gold of respect would be too soft without some alloy of fear. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Any truth creates a scandal. — Marguerite Yourcenar

The story-tellers and spinners of erotic tales are hardly more than butchers who hang up meat attractive to flies. — Marguerite Yourcenar

This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream? — Marguerite Yourcenar

All happiness is a form of innocence. — Marguerite Yourcenar

I was willing to yield to nostalgia, that melancholy residue of desire. — Marguerite Yourcenar