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If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory. Translation by David Downie
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
Survived
Memory
Memories
Present
Past
Downie
Also
Translation
Love
Translations
Life
David
More quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar
When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.
Marguerite Yourcenar
A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.
Marguerite Yourcenar
age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Any truth creates a scandal.
Marguerite Yourcenar
It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Translating is writing.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
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
Books are not life, only its ashes.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
