Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenarwas a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist. Winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, she was the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980, and the seventeenth person to occupy Seat 3...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1903
CountryUnited States of America
mind alchemist prejudice
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.
eternity existence
No one understands eternity. One simply recognizes its existence.
wise grief adversity
We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.
writing translate
Translating is writing.
writing expression choices
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.
love-is discovery not-sure
I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.
training landscape here-and-there
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.
agreement matter morality
Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern.
women care temples
Men who care passionately for women attach themselves at least as much to the temple and to the accessories of the cult as to their goddess herself.
writing hands play
A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.
mistake yield suffering
Do not mistake me. I am not yet weak enough to yield to fearful imaginings, which are almost as absurd as illusions of hope, and are certainly harder to bear. If I must deceive myself, I should prefer to stay on the side of confidence, for I shall lose no more there and shall suffer less.
passion expression blood
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.
truth lying order
I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily
mistake trying doe
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.