Quote

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

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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
Human
Western
Civilizations
Humans
Civilization
Succession
Make
Generations
Virtually
Things
Divine
Cycles
Bulwark
Men
Personal
Immortality
Stasis
Time
Alone
Wanting
Oriental
Within
Sensitive
Fortress
Change
Ancient
Fortresses

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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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Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
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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.
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Books are not life, only its ashes.
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The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself
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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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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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Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.
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Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.
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age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.
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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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Every invalid is a prisoner.
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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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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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