Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Destiny, Thinking, Insanity

  Marguerite Yourcenar, Matthieu Galey (1984). “With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey”, Boston : Beacon Press

  48 Copy quote

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Strong, Love Is, Punishment

  49 Copy quote

• I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Life, Change, Wisdom

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1954). “Memoirs of Hadrian”

  67 Copy quote

• 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

  Mistake, Trying, Doe

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1954). “Memoirs of Hadrian”

  22 Copy quote

• We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Wise, Grief, Adversity

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1994). “Fires”, p.79, University of Chicago Press

  25 Copy quote

• All happiness is a work of art: the smallest error falsifies it, the slightest hesitation alters it, the least heaviness spoils it, the slightest stupidity brutalizes it.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Art, Errors, Stupidity

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  Spiritual, Journey, Watches

  Marguerite Yourcenar, Nicoletta Lanciano (2005). “Hadrian's villa: between heaven and earth : a tour with Marguerite Yourcenar”

  29 Copy quote

• All happiness is a form of innocence.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Happiness, Innocence, Form

  Marguerite Yourcenar, Matthieu Galey (1984). “With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey”, Boston : Beacon Press

  29 Copy quote

• age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Children, Mean, Childhood

  Marguerite Yourcenar, Matthieu Galey (1984). “With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey”, Boston : Beacon Press

  34 Copy quote

• The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Inspirational, Faces, Mask

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1954). “Memoirs of Hadrian”

  12 Copy quote

• Every life is punctuated by deaths and departures, and each one causes great suffering that it is better to endure rather than forgo the pleasure of having known the person who has passed away. Somehow our world rebuilds itself after every death, and in any case we know that none of us will last forever. So you might say that life and death lead us by the hand, firmly but tenderly.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Our World, Hands, Life And Death

  Marguerite Yourcenar, Matthieu Galey (1984). “With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey”, Boston : Beacon Press

  33 Copy quote

• A book may lie dormant for fifty years or for two thousand years in a forgotten corner of a library, only to reveal, upon being opened, the marvels or the abysses that it contains, or the line that seems to have been written for me alone. In this respect the writer is not different from any other human being: whatever we say or do can have far-reaching consequences.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Lying, Book, Years

  29 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Eye, Intelligent

  11 Copy quote

• Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Agreement, Matter, Morality

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1957). “Hadrian's Memoirs”

  21 Copy quote

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Friendship, Art, Believe

  12 Copy quote

• Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Past, Far Away

  13 Copy quote

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Poet, Passing, Currents

  Marguerite Yourcenar, Matthieu Galey (1984). “With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey”, Boston : Beacon Press

  12 Copy quote

• Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Self, Doe, Profit

  33 Copy quote

• Everything that we do affects our fate for better or for worse. The circumstances into which we are born also exert a tremendous influence; we come into the world with debits and credits for which we are not responsible already posted to our account: this teaches us humility.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Humility, Fate, Credit

  Marguerite Yourcenar, Matthieu Galey (1984). “With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey”, Boston : Beacon Press

  17 Copy quote

• For my part I have sought liberty more than power, and power only because it can lead to freedom. What interested me was not a philosophy of the free man (all who try that have proved tiresome), but a technique: I hoped to discover the hinge where our will meets and moves with destiny, and where discipline strengthens, instead of restraining, our nature.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Philosophy, Moving, Destiny

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1954). “Memoirs of Hadrian”, New York, Farrar

  9 Copy quote

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Dream, Cities, Bed

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1994). “Fires”, p.99, University of Chicago Press

  9 Copy quote

• Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Loss, Men, Order

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1954). “Memoirs of Hadrian”

  7 Copy quote

• Ancient and oriental civilizations were more sensitive than we are to the cycles of things; to the succession of generations, both divine and human; and to change within stasis. Western man is virtually alone in wanting to make his God into a fortress and personal immortality into a bulwark against time.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Men, Civilization, Generations

  25 Copy quote

• When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Science, Reality, Ideas

  11 Copy quote

• It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Stars, Difficult, Admirable

  "Alexis". Book by Marguerite Yourcenar, 1929.

  20 Copy quote

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