“To eat fruit is to welcome into oneself a fair living object, which is alien to us but is nourished and protected… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
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 Image
Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress,… — 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
“Nailed to the beloved body like a slave to a cross, I have learned some secrets of life which are now dimmed… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
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
A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists. — 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
“That mysterious play which extends from love of a body to a love of an entire person has seemed to me noble… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“We lose track of everything, and of everyone, even ourselves. The facts of my father's life are less known to me than… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“I lent only half an ear to those well-intentioned folk who say that happiness is enervating, liberty too relaxing, and that kindness… — 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
Every life is punctuated by deaths and departures, and each one causes great suffering that it is better to endure rather than… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
“The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to… — 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
