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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.

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
Trying
Neglect
Possess
Virtue
Mistake
Doe
Persons
Cultivation
Person
Exact
Great
Virtues

More quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar

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age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.
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I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.
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I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily
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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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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Want of passion is, I think, a very striking characteristic of Americans, not unrelated to their predilection for violence. For very few people truly have a passionate desire to achieve, and violence serves as a kind of substitute.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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Morals are a matter of private agreement decency is of public concern.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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Translating is writing.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
Marguerite Yourcenar
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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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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All happiness is a form of innocence.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandonds himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.
Marguerite Yourcenar