Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes - Page 3

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• 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

  Ignorance, Pride, Investing

  10 Copy quote

• There are stages in bread-making quite similar to the stages of writing. You begin with something shapeless, which sticks to your fingers, a kind of paste. Gradually that paste becomes more and more firm. Then there comes a point when it turns rubbery. Finally, you sense that the yeast has begun to do its work: the dough is alive. Then all you have to do is let it rest. But in the case of a book the work may take ten years.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Book, Writing, Years

  9 Copy quote

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Luxury, Drug, Racing

  13 Copy quote

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Men, Ghost, Circumstances

  11 Copy quote

• Passion such as hers is all consent, asking little in return. I had merely to enter a room where she was to see her face take on that peaceful expression of one who is resting in bed. If I touched her, I had the impression that all the blood in her veins was turning to honey.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Passion, Expression, Blood

  6 Copy quote

• The founding of libraries was like constructing more public granaries, amassing reserves against a spiritual winter which by certain signs, in spite of myself, I see ahead.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Spiritual, Winter, Library

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1954). “Memoirs of Hadrian”

  6 Copy quote

• Every invalid is a prisoner.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Prisoner

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

  7 Copy quote

• Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again....Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Eye, Play, Soul

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

  8 Copy quote

• Any truth creates a scandal.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Truth, Scandal

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

  4 Copy quote

• I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Men, Thinking, Heroism

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

  9 Copy quote

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Book, Age, Should

  4 Copy quote

• The landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself composite, made up of equal parts of instinct and training. Here and there protrude the granite peaks of the inevitable, but all about is rubble from the landslips of chance.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Training, Here And There, Landscape

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

  9 Copy quote

• I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers—the emotional storage is done very early on.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Book, Emotional, Years

  4 Copy quote

• Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Beautiful, Children, Book

  8 Copy quote

• One nourishes one's created characters with one's own substance: it's rather like the process of gestation. To give the character life, or to give him back life, it is of course necessary to fortify him by contributing something of one's own humanity, but it doesn't follow from that that the character is I, the writer, or that I am the character. The two entities remain distinct.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Character, Two, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Sickness disgusts us with death, and we wish to get well, which is a way of wishing to live. But weakness and suffering, with manifold bodily woes, soon discourage the invalid from trying to regain ground: he tires of those respites which are but snares, of that faltering strength, those ardors cut short, and that perpetual lying in wait for the next attack.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Lying, Get Well, Cutting

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

  4 Copy quote

• Meditation upon death does not teach one how to die; it does not make the departure more easy, but ease is not what I seek. Beloved boy, so willful and brooding, your sacrifice will have enriched not my life but my death. ... Centuries as yet unborn within the dark womb of time would pass by thousands over that tomb without restoring life to him, but likewise without adding to his death, and without changing the fact that he had been.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Dark, Sacrifice, Boys

  4 Copy quote

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Deeds, Facts, Deny

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

  4 Copy quote

• A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Writing, Hands, Play

  8 Copy quote

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

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Travel, Would Be, Prison

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

  7 Copy quote

• the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Mirrors, Media, People

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

  4 Copy quote

• And nevertheless I have loved certain of my masters, and those strangely intimate though elusive relations existing between student and teacher, and the Sirens singing somewhere within the cracked voice of him who is first to reveal a new idea. The greatest seducer was not Alcibiades, afterall, it was Socrates.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Teacher, Voice, Ideas

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

  7 Copy quote

• The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their neglect.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Memories, Lying, Grief

  19 Copy quote

• I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Thinking, Might, Wells

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

  7 Copy quote

• Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Fall, Law, Hadrian

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

  17 Copy quote

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