Quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar

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

“Happiness is a masterpiece: the slightest error compromises it, the slightest hesitation undermines it, the slightest excess corrupts it, the slightest vulgarity defiles it.”

“Attianus had been right in his conjectures: the virgin gold of respect would be too soft without some alloy of fear.”

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

“Tout bonheur est un chef-d'oeuvre: la moindre erreur le fausse, la moindre hsitation l'altre, la moindre lourder le dpare, la moindre sottise l'abtit.”

“Le souvenir n'est qu'un regard pos de temps en temps sur des tres devenus intrieurs,mais qui ne dpendent pas de la mmoire pour continuer d'exister.”

“It is not by blood, anyhow, that man's true continuity is established: Alexander's direct heir is Caesar, and not the frail infant born of a Persian princess in an Asiatic citadel; Epaminondas, dyi...”

“I was glad that our venerable, almost formless religions, drained of all intransigence and purged of savage rites, linked us mysteriously to the most ancient secrets of man and of earth, not forbid...”

“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.”

“We lose track of everything, and of everyone, even ourselves. The facts of my father's life are less known to me than those of the life of Hadrian. My own existence, if I had to write of it, would ...”

“A part of every life, even a life meriting very little regard, is spent in searching out the reasons for its existence, its starting point, and its source. My own failure to discover these things h...”

“I lent only half an ear to those well-intentioned folk who say that happiness is enervating, liberty too relaxing, and that kindness is a corruption for those upon whom it is practiced. That may be...”

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

“At that period I paid as constant attention to the greater securing of my happiness, to enjoying and judging it, too, as I had always done for the smallest details of my acts; and what is the act o...”

“Chabrias, ever preoccupied to offer the gods the worship due them, was disturbed by the progress of sects of this kind among the populace of large cities; he feared for the welfare of our ancient r...”

“I was willing to yield to nostalgia, that melancholy residue of desire.”

“It displeases me to have some creature think that he can foresee and profit from my desire, automatically adapting himself to what he supposes to be my taste.”

“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.”

“All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres.”

“Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when the presume to anticipate custom.”