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I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.

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
Exquisite
Necessarily
Discovery
Poetry
Sure
Love

More quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar

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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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This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
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A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
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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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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The landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself composite, made up of equal parts of instinct and training. Here and there protrude the granite peaks of the inevitable, but all about is rubble from the landslips of chance.
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Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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All happiness is a form of innocence.
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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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Every invalid is a prisoner.
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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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Any truth creates a scandal.
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I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily
Marguerite Yourcenar
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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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Books are not life, only its ashes.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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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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Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.
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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.
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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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.
Marguerite Yourcenar