One nourishes one's created characters with one's own substance: it's rather like the process of gestation. To give the character life, or… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
I don't think I ever relinquish a person I have known, and surely not my fictional characters. I see them, I hear… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern. — 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 Image
Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul... — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close. — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts. — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
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 Image
“ A amizade é, acima de tudo, certeza - é isso o que a distingue do amor.” — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“Quel bel levriero... si distese sulla mia vita (Memorie di Adriano, Saeculum Aureum)” — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
