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Morals are a matter of private agreement decency is of public concern.
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
Moral
Matter
Decency
Morals
Agreement
Morality
Private
Concern
Public
More quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar
No one understands eternity. One simply recognizes its existence.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
Marguerite Yourcenar
The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
A being afire with life cannot foresee death in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.
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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.
Marguerite Yourcenar
All happiness is a form of innocence.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.
Marguerite Yourcenar
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
Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.
Marguerite Yourcenar
