Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity. Natalie Clifford Barney More Quotes by Natalie Clifford Barney More Quotes From Natalie Clifford Barney It is time for dead languages to keep quiet. Natalie Clifford Barney language quiet Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual. Natalie Clifford Barney entrepreneur lasts business I'm fond of human beings, but only one at a time. Natalie Clifford Barney sociability human-beings humans When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks. Natalie Clifford Barney valentines-day confused love I love the love of those who are far enough away, it becomes whatever I wish to believe it. Natalie Clifford Barney enough wish believe Like all religions, love has more believers than practitioners. Natalie Clifford Barney believer At first, when an idea, a poem, or the desire to write takes hold of you, work is a pleasure, a delight, and your enthusiasm knows no bounds. But later on you work with difficulty, doggedly, desperately. For once you have committed yourself to a particular work, inspiration changes its form and becomes an obsession, like a love-affair… which haunts you night and day! Once at grips with a work, we must master it completely before we can recover our idleness. Natalie Clifford Barney inspiration writing night To mis-quote is the very foundation of original style. The success of most writers is almost entirely due to continuous and courageous abuse of familiar misquotation. Natalie Clifford Barney foundation abuse style Sensuality, wanting a religion, invented Love. Natalie Clifford Barney sensuality Our shadows are taller than ourselves. Natalie Clifford Barney shadow Perhaps a reign of powerful women is necessary to make, or unmake when need be, powerful men. Women would not waste so readily and uselessly the lives they had such care and pain in bearing. Why should they submit to the massacre of the innocent, one generation after another ... and allow them to be brought up as live-stock for the inevitable killing? Natalie Clifford Barney pain powerful men I am not a bibliophile but a humanophile: I look for rare human beings. Natalie Clifford Barney bibliophiles humans looks Being bilingual is like having a wife and a mistress. One can never be sure of either. Natalie Clifford Barney mistress wife Tea - that perfume that one drinks, that connecting hyphen. Natalie Clifford Barney hyphens drink tea My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one. Natalie Clifford Barney deliberate harm vices albinos aren't reproached for having pink eyes and whitish hair, why should they hold it again me for being a lesbian? It's a question of nature: my queerness isn't a vice, isn't 'deliberate,' and harms no one. Natalie Clifford Barney eye vices hair Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men? Natalie Clifford Barney wise inspirational men if I had one ambition it was to make my life itself into a poem. Natalie Clifford Barney ambition ifs With renunciation life begins. Natalie Clifford Barney renunciation literature I do not understand those who spend hours at the theater watching scenes between people whom they would not listen to for five minutes in real life. Natalie Clifford Barney hours real people
