La parola scritta m'ha insegnato ad ascoltare la voce umana, press'a poco come gli atteggiamenti maestosi e immoti delle statue m'hanno insegnato ad … - Marguerite Yourcenar

Los hombres más opacos emiten algún resplandor: este asesino toca bien la flauta, ese contramaestre que desgarra a latigazos la espalda de los esclavos es quizá un buen hijo; ese idiota compartirá conmigo su último mendrugo. Y pocos hay que no puedan enseñarnos alguna cosa. Nuestro gran error está en tratar de obtener de cada uno en particular las virtudes que no posee, descuidando cultivar aquellas que posee. A la búsqueda de esas virtudes fragmentarias aplicaré aquí lo que decía antes, voluptuosamente, de la búsqueda de la belleza.

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.

There is more than one kind of wisdom, and all are essential in the world; it is not bad that they should alternate.