Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

La passion comblée a son innocence, presque aussi fragile que toute autre.

También conseguimos engañar a nuestra memoria. A fuerza de repetirnos lo que hubiéramos debido hacer, termina por parecernos imposible no haberlo hecho.

Any happiness is a masterpiece.

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.

Human beings betray their worst failings when they marvel to find that a world ruler is neither foolishly indolent, presumptuous, nor cruel.

We believe ourselves pure as long as we despise what we do not desire.

Era demasiado joven para sospechar que la existencia no está hecha de súbitos impulsos y de obstinada constancia sino de compromisos y de olvidos

Is the soul only the supreme development of the body, the fragile evidence of the pain and pleasure of existing? Is it, on the contrary more ancient than the body, which is modeled on its image and which serves it momentarily, more or less well, as instrument?

Che cos'è l'insonnia se non la maniaca ostinazione della nostra mente a fabbricare pensieri, ragionamenti, sillogismi e definizioni tutte sue, il suo rifiuto di abdicare di fronte alla divina incoscienza degli occhi chiusi o alla saggia follia dei sogni? L'uomo che non dorme - da qualche mese a questa parte ho fin troppe occasioni di constatarlo su me stesso - si rifiuta più o meno consapevolmente di affidarsi al flusso delle cose.

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.

Sobre todo, no se enamora uno de quien se le parece.

At this period of his existence, meat and blood, entrails, and all that had ever lived and breathed disgusted him as food, for an animal dies in pain just as man does, and it repelled him to be digesting death's agony.

On peut dire que tout est prédestiné, que tout est un arrangement extrêmement savant dont nous ne voyons qu'une toute petite partie. On peut dire aussi que tout est chaos, et je me heurterai à ce dilemme jusqu'au bout. (p. 166)

It is not that I despise men. If I did I should have no right, and no reason, to try to govern.

...aveva dovuto credersi amato ben poco per non sentire che perderlo sarebbe stato per me il peggiore dei mali.