Natalie Clifford Barney Quotes

Natalie Clifford Barney was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris.

Barney's salon was held at her home at 20 rue Jacob in Paris's Left Bank for more than 60 years and brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation. She worked to promote writing by women and formed a "Women's Academy" in response to the all-male French Academy while also giving support and inspiration to male writers from Remy de Gourmont to Truman Capote.She was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of getting rid of nuisances" . She wrote in both French and English. In her writings she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and dancer Armen Ohanian and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels, ranging from the salacious French bestseller Idylle Saphique to The Well of Loneliness, the most famous lesbian novel of the twentieth century.



Wikipedia  

✵ 31. October 1876 – 2. February 1972
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Natalie Clifford Barney: 8 quotes0 likes

Famous Natalie Clifford Barney Quotes

“If we are bothered by possessions we cannot really live either from without or from within; we are the possession of our possessions.”

Natalie Clifford Barney

In "My Country 'tis of Thee", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)
Context: I am beginning to have a healthy dread of possessions, be it of a country, a house, a being or even an idea. If we are bothered by possessions we cannot really live either from without or from within; we are the possession of our possessions. All wars and most loves come from the possessive instinct. Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men: that you may belong to everything and everything be yours inclusive of yourself.
Could we, and we can, have the vital necessities for all, we should do away with this cry of class and begin to differentiate between individuals.
Individual superiority can alone feed the soul and give back through some materialisation of itself this individualised wealth of being.

“Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men: that you may belong to everything and everything be yours inclusive of yourself.”

Natalie Clifford Barney

In "My Country 'tis of Thee", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)
Context: I am beginning to have a healthy dread of possessions, be it of a country, a house, a being or even an idea. If we are bothered by possessions we cannot really live either from without or from within; we are the possession of our possessions. All wars and most loves come from the possessive instinct. Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men: that you may belong to everything and everything be yours inclusive of yourself.
Could we, and we can, have the vital necessities for all, we should do away with this cry of class and begin to differentiate between individuals.
Individual superiority can alone feed the soul and give back through some materialisation of itself this individualised wealth of being.

“The advantage of love at first sight is that it delays a second sight.”

Natalie Clifford Barney

In "Samples from Almost Illegible Notebooks", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)

“If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.”

Natalie Clifford Barney

In "Samples from Almost Illegible Notebooks", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)

“Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth.”

Natalie Clifford Barney

In "Samples from Almost Illegible Notebooks", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)

“Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.”

Natalie Clifford Barney

As quoted in The Amazon of Letters, Ch. 10 (1976) by George Wickes

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