Quote

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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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
Sides
Harder
Absurd
Almost
Certainly
Prefer
Suffering
Stay
Suffer
Imaginings
Less
Lose
Bear
Deceive
Hope
Side
Illusion
Illusions
Enough
Loses
Bears
Deceiving
Must
Shall
Confidence
Fearful
Mistake
Weak
Yield

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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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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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A being afire with life cannot foresee death in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
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Passion such as hers is all consent, asking little in return. I had merely to enter a room where she was to see her face take on that peaceful expression of one who is resting in bed. If I touched her, I had the impression that all the blood in her veins was turning to honey.
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Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.
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Morals are a matter of private agreement decency is of public concern.
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All happiness is a form of innocence.
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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.
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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
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Writing is a perpetual choice between a thousand expressions, none of which satisfies me, none of which, above all, satisfies me without the others. Yet I ought to know that only music permits a succession of chords.
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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.
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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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I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily
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It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
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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.
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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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age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.
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Translating is writing.
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A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
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The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself
Marguerite Yourcenar