Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes (37 quotes)

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A Coin in Nine Hands

Marguerite Yourcenar

Marguerite Yourcenar: 37 quotes 1 like

Famous Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

“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 book Memoirs of Hadrian

Source: Memoirs of Hadrian

“Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul…”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Source: Memoirs of Hadrian

“This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?”

Marguerite Yourcenar

“I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Source: Memoirs of Hadrian

“The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Le véritable lieu de naissance est celui où l'on a porté pour la première fois un coup d'oeil intelligent sur soi-même: mes premières patries ont été des livres.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 33

“Nothing is slower than the true birth of a man.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Rien n'est plus lent que la véritable naissance d'un homme.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 258

Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes about time

“Few bipeds, from Adam's time down, have been worthy of the name of man.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

Peu de bipèdes depuis Adam ont mérité le nom d'homme.
"A Conversation in Innsbruck", p. 114
The Abyss (1968)

“I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Je savais que le bien comme le mal est affaire de routine, que le temporaire se prolonge, que l'extérieur s'infiltre au dedans, et que le masque, à la longue, devient visage.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 97

“Doubtless it signified one or the other meaning alternately, or perhaps both at the same time.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

Author's note, p. 367
The Abyss (1968)
Context: In alchemical treatises, the formula L'Oeuvre au Noir … designates what is said to be the most difficult phase of the alchemist's process, the separation and dissolution of substance. It is still not clear whether the term applied to daring experiments on matter itself, or whether it was understood to symbolize trials of the mind in discarding all forms of routine and prejudice. Doubtless it signified one or the other meaning alternately, or perhaps both at the same time.

“Our civil laws will never be supple enough to fit the immense and changing variety of facts. 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.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Nos lois civiles ne seront jamais assez souples pour s'adapter à l'immense et fluide variété des faits. Elles changent moins vite que les moeurs; dangereuses quand elles retardent sur celles-ci, elles le sont davantage quand elles se mêlent de les précéder.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 113

Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

“Every silence is composed of nothing but unspoken words. Perhaps that is why I became a musician. Someone had to express this silence, make it render up all the sadness it contained, make it sing as it were.”

Marguerite Yourcenar

Alexis (1929)
Context: Every silence is composed of nothing but unspoken words. Perhaps that is why I became a musician. Someone had to express this silence, make it render up all the sadness it contained, make it sing as it were. Someone had to use not words, which are always too precise not to be cruel, but simply music.

Sadness , Silence , Singing

“In alchemical treatises, the formula L'Oeuvre au Noir … designates what is said to be the most difficult phase of the alchemist's process, the separation and dissolution of substance.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

“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 book Memoirs of Hadrian

Source: Memoirs of Hadrian

Personality

“Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.”

Marguerite Yourcenar

Children , Books , Beauty

“There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Source: Memoirs of Hadrian

Books , Age

“The unfortunate thing is that, because wishes sometimes come true, the agony of hoping is perpetuated.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book A Coin in Nine Hands

Le malheur est que, parfois, des souhaits s'accomplissent, afin que se perpétue le supplice de l'espérance.
Denier du rêve (1934), translated as A Coin in Nine Hands (1994) by Dori Katz, Ch. 3, p. 31 ISBN 0-226-96527-9

Hope

“To have merit to abstain from a fault, is a manner to be guilty.”

Marguerite Yourcenar

Avoir du mérite à s'abstenir d'une faute, c'est une façon d'être coupable.
Alexis (1929)

“Beyond this village, other villages; beyond this abbey, other abbeys; and after the fortress, more fortresses still. And each of these castles of stone and each wooden hut has its structure of fixed ideas or flimsy, ill-based opinions superposed above it within which fools stay immured, but the wise find apertures for escape.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

The Highroad, p. 11
The Abyss (1968)

Fools , Idea

“We believe ourselves pure as long as we despise what we do not desire.”

Marguerite Yourcenar

Nous nous croyons purs tant que nous méprisons ce que nous ne désirons pas.
Alexis (1929)

“One must not fear the words anymore when one consented to the things.”

Marguerite Yourcenar

On ne doit plus craindre les mots lorsqu'on a consenti aux choses.
Alexis (1929)

Fear

“At this period of his existence, meat and blood, entrails, and all that had ever lived and breathed disgusted him as food, for an animal dies in pain just as man does, and it repelled him to be digesting death's agony.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

Source: The Abyss (1968), p. 190

Death , Pain , Food , Animals

“The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

La mémoire de la plupart des hommes est un cimetière abandonné, où gisent sans honneurs des morts qu'ils ont cessé de chérir.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 209

Men , Lie , Memory , Dead

“A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.”

Marguerite Yourcenar

Je crois qu'il faut presque toujours un coup de folie pour bâtir un destin.
Les yeux ouverts: entretiens avec Matthieu Galey [With Open Eyes: Conversations With Matthieu Galey] (1980)

Thinking , Madness

“Human beings betray their worst failings when they marvel to find that a world ruler is neither foolishly indolent, presumptuous, nor cruel.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Les êtres humains avouent leurs pires faiblesses quand ils s'étonnent qu'un maître du monde ne soit pas sottement indolent, présomptueux, ou cruel.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 103

World

“Passion satisfied has its innocence, almost as fragile as any other.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

La passion comblée a son innocence, presque aussi fragile que toute autre.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 156

Passion

“It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.”

Marguerite Yourcenar

Il n'est pas difficile de nourrir des pensées admirables lorsque les étoiles sont présentes.
Alexis (1929)

Star

“Our defects are sometimes the better adversaries when we oppose our vices.”

Marguerite Yourcenar

Nos défauts sont parfois les meilleurs adversaires que nous opposions à nos vices.
Alexis (1929)

“Any law too often subject to infraction is bad; it is the duty of the legislator to repeal or change it.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Toute loi trop souvent transgressée est mauvaise: c'est au législateur à l'abroger ou à la changer.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 113

Law , Change

“Every bliss achieved is a masterpiece: the slightest error turns it awry, and it alters with one touch of doubt; any heaviness detracts from its charm, the least stupidity renders it dull.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Tout bonheur est un chef-d'oeuvre: la moindre erreur le fausse, la moindre hésitation l'altère, la moindre lourdeur le dépare, la moindre sottise l'abêtit.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 164

Stupidity , Error

“Overhead shone the great star of the constellation of Lyra, destined to be the polar star for men who will live tens of thousands of years after we have ceased to be.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 148

Men , Star

“The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life’s full measure.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

The Highroad, p. 11
The Abyss (1968)

Life , World , Heart

“Leisure moments: each life well regulated has some such intervals, and he who cannot make way for them does not know how to live.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Des moments libres. Toute vie bien réglée a les siens, et qui ne sait pas les provoquer ne sait pas vivre.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 43

Life , Way

“The skirmishes with the theologians had had their charm, but he knew well that no lasting accord exists between those who seek, ponder, and dissect and pride themselves on being capable of thinking tomorrow other than they do today, and those who accept the Faith, or declare that they do, and oblige their fellow men to do the same, on pain of death.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

il [Zénon] savait fort bien qu'il n'existe aucun accommodement durable entre ceux qui cherchent, pèsent, dissèquent, et s'honorent d'être capables de penser demain autrement qu'aujourd'hui, et ceux qui croient ou affirment croire, et obligent sous peine de mort leurs semblables à en faire autant.
The Indictment, p. 317
The Abyss (1968)

Death , Men , Pain , Faith

“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.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

La lettre écrite m'a enseigné à écouter la voix humaine, tout comme les grandes attitudes immobiles des statues m'ont appris à apprécier les gestes.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 21