Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

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

The short and obscene sentence of Poseidonius about the rubbing together of two small pieces of flesh, which I have seen you copy in your exercise books with the application of a good schoolboy, does no more to define the phenomenon of love than the cord touched by the finger accounts for the infinite miracle of sounds. Such a dictum is less an insult to pleasure than to the flesh itself, that amazing instrument of muscles, blood, and skin, that red-tinged cloud whose lightning is the soul.

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

Je crois qu'il faut presque toujours un coup de folie pour bâtir un destin.

Somos todos iguales: le tenemos miedo al drama, pero a veces somos lo bastante románticos para desear que ocurra y no nos damos cuenta de que ha empezado ya,

La morale è una convenzione privata; il decoro è una faccenda pubblica.

Suffering turns us into egotists, for it absorbs us completely: it is later, in the form of memory, that it teaches us compassion.

Passion satisfied has its innocence, almost as fragile as any other.

Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul, and is also the only one in which the player has to abandon himself to the body's ecstasy.

Je savais que le bien comme le mal est affaire de routine, que le temporaire se prolonge, que l'extérieur s'infiltre au dedans, et que le masque, à la longue, devient visage.

It is not by blood, anyhow, that man's true continuity is established: Alexander's direct heir is Caesar, and not the frail infant born of a Persian princess in an Asiatic citadel; Epaminondas, dying without issue, was right to boast that he had Victories for daughters.

Nailed to the beloved body like a slave to a cross, I have learned some secrets of life which are now dimmed in my memory by the operation of the same law which ordains that the convalescent, once cured, ceases to understand the mysterious truths laid bare by illness, and that the prisoner, set free, forgets his torture, or the conqueror, his triumph passed, forgets his glory.

The founding of libraries was like constructing more public granaries, amassing reserves against a spiritual winter which by certain signs, in spite of myself, I see ahead…

Contrairement à la plupart des hommes un peu réfléchis, je n'ai pas plus l'habitude du mépris de soi que de l'amour-propre ; je sens trop que chaque acte est complet, nécessaire et inévitable, bien qu'imprévu à la minute qui précède, et dépassé à la minute qui suit. Pris dans une série de décisions toutes définitives, pas plus qu'un animal, je n'avais eu le temps d'être un problème à mes propres yeux. (p. 158-159)

...and I reminded myself that the reproach of intellectualism is often directed at the most sensitive natures, those most ardently alive, those obliged by their frailty or their excess of strength constantly to resort to the arduous disciplines of the mind.