Quote

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

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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
Times
Slowly
Fall
Laws
Stills
Behinds
Change
Behind
Hadrian
Still
Dangerous
Presume
Politics
Custom
Law
Anticipate
Though
Customs

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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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Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.
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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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A being afire with life cannot foresee death in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
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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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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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The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself
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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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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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Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.
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Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.
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Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul.
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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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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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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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the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.
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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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Books are not life, only its ashes.
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Every invalid is a prisoner.
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Everything that we do affects our fate for better or for worse. The circumstances into which we are born also exert a tremendous influence we come into the world with debits and credits for which we are not responsible already posted to our account: this teaches us humility.
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