Marguerite Yourcenar quotes

A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny. (Marguerite Yourcenar)
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. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
Who would be so besotted as to die without having made at least the round of this, his prison? View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
Nothing is slower than the true birth of a man. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
The world is big ... May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul... View quote
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. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream? (Marguerite Yourcenar)
I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry. View quote
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. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
Every invalid is a prisoner. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
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. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
Human beings betray their worst failings when they marvel to find that a world ruler is neither foolishly indolent, presumptuous, nor cruel. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
Passion satisfied has its innocence, almost as fragile as any other. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
Our defects are sometimes the better adversaries when we oppose our vices. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
Our civil laws will never be supple enough to fit the immense and changing variety of facts. 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. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
Overhead shone the great star of the constellation of Lyra, destined to be the polar star for men who will live tens of thousands of years after we have ceased to be. (Marguerite Yourcenar)
Leisure moments: each life well regulated has some such intervals, and he who cannot make way for them does not know how to live. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
The skirmishes with the theologians had had their charm, but he knew well that no lasting accord exists between those who seek, ponder, and dissect and pride themselves on being capable of thinking tomorrow other than they do today, and those who accept the Faith, or declare that they do, and oblige their fellow men to do the same, on pain of death. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
There is more than one kind of wisdom, and all are essential in the world; it is not bad that they should alternate. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar
All would have transformed us if we had the courage to be what we are. View quote
Marguerite Yourcenar