It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present. Marguerite Yourcenar More Quotes by Marguerite Yourcenar More Quotes From Marguerite Yourcenar Translating is writing. Marguerite Yourcenar translatewriting If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by David Downie Marguerite Yourcenar love-lifememoriespast 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. Marguerite Yourcenar alchemistprejudicemind Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern. Marguerite Yourcenar moralityagreementmatter I believe that friendship, like love, of which it is a particular kind, requires nearly as much art as a successful choreography. Marguerite Yourcenar friendshipbelieveart Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables. Marguerite Yourcenar luxuryracingdrug Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close. Marguerite Yourcenar far-awaypast But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts. Marguerite Yourcenar ghostcircumstancesmen The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself Marguerite Yourcenar maskfacesinspirational For my part I have sought liberty more than power, and power only because it can lead to freedom. What interested me was not a philosophy of the free man (all who try that have proved tiresome), but a technique: I hoped to discover the hinge where our will meets and moves with destiny, and where discipline strengthens, instead of restraining, our nature. Marguerite Yourcenar destinyphilosophymoving Everything that we do affects our fate for better or for worse. The circumstances into which we are born also exert a tremendous influence; we come into the world with debits and credits for which we are not responsible already posted to our account: this teaches us humility. Marguerite Yourcenar creditfatehumility There are stages in bread-making quite similar to the stages of writing. You begin with something shapeless, which sticks to your fingers, a kind of paste. Gradually that paste becomes more and more firm. Then there comes a point when it turns rubbery. Finally, you sense that the yeast has begun to do its work: the dough is alive. Then all you have to do is let it rest. But in the case of a book the work may take ten years. Marguerite Yourcenar writingbookyears 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 differentlawmen Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books. Marguerite Yourcenar intelligenteyebook 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. Marguerite Yourcenar yieldsufferingmistake I don't think I ever relinquish a person I have known, and surely not my fictional characters. I see them, I hear them, with a clarity that I would call hallucinatory if hallucination didn't mean something else ... A character whom we create can never die, any more than a friend can die ... Through [my characters] I've lived many parallel lives. Marguerite Yourcenar charactermeanthinking The technique of a great seducer requires a facility and an indifference in passing from one object of affection to another which I could never have; however that may be, my loves have left me more often than I have left them, for I have never been able to understand how one could have enough of any beloved. The desire to count up exactly the riches which each new love brings us, and to see it change, and perhaps watch it grow old, accords ill with multiplicity of conquests. Marguerite Yourcenar techniquedesirewatches On the whole, however, it is only out of pride or gross ignorance, or cowardice, that we refuse to see in the present the lineaments of times to come. Marguerite Yourcenar investingprideignorance Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others. Marguerite Yourcenar hoursdutyspecial I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily Marguerite Yourcenar honestytruthlying
