Quote

Any truth creates a scandal.

Marguerite Yourcenar

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Scandal
Creates
Truth

More quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar

Image
I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
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
Image
I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
Books are not life, only its ashes.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
A being afire with life cannot foresee death in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
Morals are a matter of private agreement decency is of public concern.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
All happiness is a form of innocence.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
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
Image
It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
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
Image
age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
Translating is writing.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Image
Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.
Marguerite Yourcenar