Natalie Clifford Barney Quotes

Quotes about:

Books Literature

It is time for dead languages to keep quiet.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Quiet, Language

"A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney".

42 Copy quote
Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?

Natalie Clifford Barney

Inspirational, Wise, Men

"My Country 'tis of Thee". Adam International Review, No. 299, 1962.

34 Copy quote
Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Business, Entrepreneur, Lasts

23 Copy quote
Our shadows are taller than ourselves.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Shadow

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.101, New Victoria Publishers

6 Copy quote
The past is such a subtle thing. [But] in the end, nothing else exists, everything is made of the past, even the future.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Past, Ends, Subtle

0 Copy quote
I love the love of those who are far enough away, it becomes whatever I wish to believe it.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Believe, Wish, Enough

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.63, New Victoria Publishers

11 Copy quote
I'm fond of human beings, but only one at a time.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Humans, Human Beings, Sociability

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.115, New Victoria Publishers

11 Copy quote
I am not a bibliophile but a humanophile: I look for rare human beings.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Looks, Bibliophiles, Humans

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A perilous advantage: the best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, New Victoria Pub

0 Copy quote
When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Love, Valentines Day, Confused

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.110, New Victoria Publishers

81 Copy quote
To mis-quote is the very foundation of original style. The success of most writers is almost entirely due to continuous and courageous abuse of familiar misquotation.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Abuse, Style, Foundation

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.8, New Victoria Publishers

6 Copy quote
Sensuality, wanting a religion, invented Love.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Sensuality

7 Copy quote
Like all religions, love has more believers than practitioners.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Believer

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.111, New Victoria Publishers

7 Copy quote
At first, when an idea, a poem, or the desire to write takes hold of you, work is a pleasure, a delight, and your enthusiasm knows no bounds. But later on you work with difficulty, doggedly, desperately. For once you have committed yourself to a particular work, inspiration changes its form and becomes an obsession, like a love-affair… which haunts you night and day! Once at grips with a work, we must master it completely before we can recover our idleness.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Inspiration, Writing, Night

10 Copy quote
Being bilingual is like having a wife and a mistress. One can never be sure of either.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Wife, Mistress

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.9, New Victoria Publishers

5 Copy quote
My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Vices, Harm, Deliberate

9 Copy quote
Perhaps a reign of powerful women is necessary to make, or unmake when need be, powerful men. Women would not waste so readily and uselessly the lives they had such care and pain in bearing. Why should they submit to the massacre of the innocent, one generation after another ... and allow them to be brought up as live-stock for the inevitable killing?

Natalie Clifford Barney

Pain, Powerful, Men

6 Copy quote
Tea - that perfume that one drinks, that connecting hyphen.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Tea, Drink, Hyphens

Natalie Clifford Barney (1992). “Adventures of the Mind: The Memoirs of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.161, NYU Press

7 Copy quote
... anything difficult to say must be shouted from the rooftops.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Rooftops, Difficult

Natalie Clifford Barney (1992). “Adventures of the Mind: The Memoirs of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.21, NYU Press

60 Copy quote
I do not understand those who spend hours at the theater watching scenes between people whom they would not listen to for five minutes in real life.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Real, People, Hours

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.125, New Victoria Publishers

0 Copy quote
albinos aren't reproached for having pink eyes and whitish hair, why should they hold it again me for being a lesbian? It's a question of nature: my queerness isn't a vice, isn't 'deliberate,' and harms no one.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Eye, Hair, Vices

7 Copy quote
if I had one ambition it was to make my life itself into a poem.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Ambition, Ifs

Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.19, New Victoria Publishers

4 Copy quote
With renunciation life begins.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Literature, Renunciation

5 Copy quote
Our prejudices, our antipathies, are our natural defenses against what we could not assimilate.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Prejudice, Defense, Natural

Natalie Clifford Barney (1992). “Adventures of the Mind: The Memoirs of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.98, NYU Press

0 Copy quote
To be one's own master is to be the slave of self.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Self, Slave, Masters

0 Copy quote
Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Demand, Seduction, Virtue

5 Copy quote

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Born: October 31, 1876
Died: February 2, 1972
Occupation: Playwright
Cite this Page: Citation

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