Quote

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.

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
Thousand
Expressions
Ought
Succession
Choices
Chords
Others
Permit
Music
Perpetual
Without
None
Writing
Choice
Satisfies
Expression
Permits

More quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar

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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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I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.
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All happiness is a form of innocence.
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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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Morals are a matter of private agreement decency is of public concern.
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the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.
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Books are not life, only its ashes.
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It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
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The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself
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I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily
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Translating is writing.
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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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Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
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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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Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.
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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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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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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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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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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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