Fondare biblioteche è un pò come costruire ancora granai pubblici: ammassare riserve contro l'inverno dello spirito che da molti indizi, mio malgrado… - Marguerite Yourcenar

...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.

M'importava assai poco che l'accordo ottenuto fosse esteriore, imposto, probabilmente temporaneo; sapevo che il bene e il male sono una questione d'abitudine, che il temporaneo si prolunga, che le cose esterne penetrano all'interno, e che la maschera, a lungo andare, diventa il volto.

In a sense, everything is magic: magic, for example, is the science of herbs and metals, which allows the physician to influence both malady and patient; magical, too, is illness itself, which imposes itself upon a body like a demonical possession of which sometimes the body is unwilling to be healed. The power of sounds, high or low, is magic, disturbing the soul, or possibly soothing it. Magic, above all, is the virulent force of words, which are almost always stronger than the things for which they stand; their power justifies what is said about them in the Sepher Yetsira, not to mention between us the Gospel According to Saint John. Magical is the prestige which surrounds a monarch, and which emanates from the ceremonies of the Church; and magical in their effect, likewise, are the scaffolds draped in black and the lugubrious roll of drums at executions; all such trappings transfix and terrify the gaping onlookers even more than they awe the victims. And finally, love is magic, as is hatred, too, imprinting as they do upon the brain the image of a being whom we allow to haunt us.