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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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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
Heart
Expand
Life
Measure
World
Please
Full
Bigs
May
Human
Humans
Perchance

More quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar

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Ancient and oriental civilizations were more sensitive than we are to the cycles of things to the succession of generations, both divine and human and to change within stasis. Western man is virtually alone in wanting to make his God into a fortress and personal immortality into a bulwark against time.
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It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
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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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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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A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
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.
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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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A being afire with life cannot foresee death in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
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Books are not life, only its ashes.
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Any truth creates a scandal.
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Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.
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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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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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No one understands eternity. One simply recognizes its existence.
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Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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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.
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.
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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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Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
Marguerite Yourcenar