Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close. — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“This Second Century appeals to me because it was the last century, for a very long period of time, in which men… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandonds himself to his demon or… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“One night (I was eleven years old at the time) he came and shook me from my sleep and announced, with the… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
This morning it occurred to me for the first time that my body, my faithful companion and friend, truer and better known… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
There are stages in bread-making quite similar to the stages of writing. You begin with something shapeless, which sticks to your fingers,… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“From each art practiced in its time I derive a knowledge which compensates me in part for pleasures lost. I have supposed,… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“But even the longest dedication is too short and too commonplace to honor a friendship so uncommon. When I try to define… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“The future of the world no longer disturbs me; I do not try still to calculate, with anguish, how long or how… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“But other hordes would come, and other false prophets. Our feeble efforts to ameliorate man’s lot would be but vaguely continued by… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
On the whole, however, it is only out of pride or gross ignorance, or cowardice, that we refuse to see in the… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“Any law too often subject to infraction is bad; it is the duty of the legislator to repeal or to change it, lest the… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul... — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
A book may lie dormant for fifty years or for two thousand years in a forgotten corner of a library, only to reveal, upon… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
“To eat fruit is to welcome into oneself a fair living object, which is alien to us but is nourished and protected like us… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
Writing is a perpetual choice between a thousand expressions, none of which satisfies me, none of which, above all, satisfies me without the others.… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
The landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts. — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
“ A amizade é, acima de tudo, certeza - é isso o que a distingue do amor.” — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
“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… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
“Quel bel levriero... si distese sulla mia vita (Memorie di Adriano, Saeculum Aureum)” — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone. — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit. — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure. — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share
