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Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul.

Marguerite Yourcenar

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Marguerite Yourcenar
Age: 84 †
Born: 1903
Born: June 7
Died: 1987
Died: December 17
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Brussels
Belgium
Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour
Yourcenar
Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour
Marguerite de Crayencour
Unsettle
Hadrian
Threatens
Games
Soul
Play
Love

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Morals are a matter of private agreement decency is of public concern.
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The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.
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It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
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Books are not life, only its ashes.
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Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.
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This morning it occurred to me for the first time that my body, my faithful companion and friend, truer and better known to me than my own soul, may be after all only a sly beast who will end by devouring his master.
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A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
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All happiness is a form of innocence.
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Every invalid is a prisoner.
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Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.
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I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers—the emotional storage is done very early on.
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Since man, fragment of the universe, is governed by the same laws that preside over the heavens, it is by no means absurd to search there above for the themes of our lives, for those frigid sympathies that participate in our achievements as well as our blunderings.
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The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.
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Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
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Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.
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The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.
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No one understands eternity. One simply recognizes its existence.
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Do not mistake me. I am not yet weak enough to yield to fearful imaginings, which are almost as absurd as illusions of hope, and are certainly harder to bear. If I must deceive myself, I should prefer to stay on the side of confidence, for I shall lose no more there and shall suffer less.
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Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.
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Any truth creates a scandal.
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