Quotes from Natalie Clifford Barney

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

We know all their gods; they ignore ours. What they call our sins are our gods, and what they call their gods, we name otherwise.

If only art were as rare as good taste.

It's necessary to use suffering. Otherwise, one is used by it.

Sensuality, wanting a religion, invented Love.

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.

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

It is time for dead languages to be quiet.

It is time for dead languages to keep quiet.

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

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.

The finest life is spent creating oneself, not procreating.

Novels are longer than life.

There are intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.

Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity.

How many inner resources one needs to tolerate a life of leisure without fatigue.

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

Lovers should also have their days off.

Like all religions, love has more believers than practitioners.

The advantage of love at first sight is that it delays a second sight.

Would that well-thinking people should be replaced by thinking ones.

In love there is no status quo.

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.

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