Cercai di percorrere col pensiero la rivoluzione attraverso la quale passeremo tutti, il cuore che s'arresta, il cervello che rinuncia al pensiero, i… - Marguerite Yourcenar

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.

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.

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.