Our prejudices, our antipathies, are our natural defenses against what we could not assimilate. 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 languagequiet Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual. Natalie Clifford Barney entrepreneurlastsbusiness I'm fond of human beings, but only one at a time. Natalie Clifford Barney sociabilityhuman-beingshumans 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-dayconfusedlove I love the love of those who are far enough away, it becomes whatever I wish to believe it. Natalie Clifford Barney enoughwishbelieve 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 inspirationwritingnight 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 foundationabusestyle 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 painpowerfulmen I am not a bibliophile but a humanophile: I look for rare human beings. Natalie Clifford Barney bibliophileshumanslooks Being bilingual is like having a wife and a mistress. One can never be sure of either. Natalie Clifford Barney mistresswife Tea - that perfume that one drinks, that connecting hyphen. Natalie Clifford Barney hyphensdrinktea My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one. Natalie Clifford Barney deliberateharmvices 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 eyeviceshair Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men? Natalie Clifford Barney wiseinspirationalmen if I had one ambition it was to make my life itself into a poem. Natalie Clifford Barney ambitionifs With renunciation life begins. Natalie Clifford Barney renunciationliterature 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 hoursrealpeople
