Quotes from Marguerite Yourcenar

La castidad, en la que antaño veía una superstición que debía combatirse, le parecía ahora una de las caras de la serenidad: saboreaba ese frío conocimiento que uno tiene de los seres cuando ya no los desea.

un Ulisse senz'altra Itaca che quella interiore.

Persoana mea se estompa pentru c? punctul meu de vedere începuse s? conteze.

I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily.

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

He had come to that time in his life (it varies for every man) when a human being gives himself over to his demon or to his genius, according to a mysterious law which orders him either to destroy or to surpass himself.

Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul...

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.

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.

Nothing is slower than the true birth of a man.

He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandonds himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.

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...

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

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

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

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. On the other hand, but more slowly, life has thrown light for me on the meaning of books.

I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.

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.

Notre grande erreur est d'essayer d'obtenir de chacun en particulier les vertus qu'il n'a pas, et de négliger de cultiver celles qu'il possède.

The technique of a great seducer requires a facility and an indifference in passing from one object of affection to another which I could never have; however that may be, my loves have left me more often than I have left them, for I have never been able to understand how one could have enough of any beloved. The desire to count up exactly the riches which each new love brings us, and to see it change, and perhaps watch it grow old, accords ill with multiplicity of conquests.

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.

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.

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.

Le véritable lieu de naissance est celui où l'on a porté pour la première fois un coup d'oeil intelligent sur soi-même: mes premières patries ont été des livres.