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A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
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
Almost
Always
Think
Constructing
Thinking
Insanity
Madness
Touch
Destiny
Necessary
More quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar
Any truth creates a scandal.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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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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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Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
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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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Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.
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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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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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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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Translating is writing.
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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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Every invalid is a prisoner.
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It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
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Books are not life, only its ashes.
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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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Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul.
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Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.
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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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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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
No one understands eternity. One simply recognizes its existence.
Marguerite Yourcenar