Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

Des moments libres. Toute vie bien réglée a les siens, et qui ne sait pas les provoquer ne sait pas vivre.

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,

Il vero luogo natio è quello dove per la prima volta si è posato uno sguardo consapevole su se stessi: la mia prima patria sono stati i libri.

Toda mujer que ama es una pobre inocente.

The story-tellers and spinners of erotic tales are hardly more than butchers who hang up meat attractive to flies.

Nothing is slower than the true birth of a man.

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…

Ce matin, l'idée m'est venue pour la première fois que mon corps, ce fidèle compagnon, cet ami plus sûr, mieux connu de moi que mon âme, n'est qu'un monstre sournois qui finira par dévorer son maître.

To eat fruit is to welcome into oneself a fair living object, which is alien to us but is nourished and protected like us by earth; it is to consume a sacrifice wherein we sustain ourselves at the expense of things.

Comme tout le monde, je n'ai à mon service que trois moyens d'évaluer l'existence humaine: l'étude de soi, la plus difficile et la plus dangereuse, mais aussi la plus féconde des méthodes; l'observation des hommes, qui s'arrangent le plus souvent pour nous cacher leurs secrets ou pour nous faire croire qu'ils en ont; les livres, avec les erreurs particulières de perspective qui naissent entre leurs lignes.

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?

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

I have no children, nor is that a regret. To be sure, in time of weakness and fatigue, when one lacks the courage of one’s convictions, I have sometimes reproached myself for not having taken the precaution to engender a son, to follow me. But such a vain regret rests upon two hypotheses, equally doubtful: first, that a son necessarily continues us, and second, that the strange mixture of good and evil, that mass of minute and odd particularities which make up a person, deserves continuation.

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.

Meditation upon death does not teach one how to die; it does not make the departure more easy, but ease is not what I seek. Beloved boy, so willful and brooding, your sacrifice will have enriched not my life but my death.
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Centuries as yet unborn within the dark womb of time would pass by thousands over that tomb without restoring life to him, but likewise without adding to his death, and without changing the fact that he had been.