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 to give him back life, it is of course necessary to fortify him by contributing something of one's… — Marguerite Yourcenar Copy Share Image
In alchemical treatises, the formula L'Oeuvre au Noir ... designates what is said to be the most difficult phase of the alchemist's process, the separation and dissolution of substance. It is still not clear whether the term applied to daring… — 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