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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
The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself
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Translating is writing.
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Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
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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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All happiness is a form of innocence.
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Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.
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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 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.
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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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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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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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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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If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory. Translation by David Downie
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Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables.
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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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It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
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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 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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Any truth creates a scandal.
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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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