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
dream cities bed
This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
men thinking heroism
I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.
memories love-life past
If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by David Downie
book people ancient
One reads thousands of books, of poets, modern and ancient, as one meets thousands of people. What remains of it all is hard to tell.
memories lying grief
The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their neglect.
special hours duty
Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others ...
love-is discovery not-sure
I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.
wise grief adversity
We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.
men ghost circumstances
But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts.
poet passing currents
For me, a poet is someone who is 'in contact.' Someone through whom a current is passing.
happiness innocence form
All happiness is a form of innocence.
men law genius
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.
stars difficult admirable
It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
eternity existence
No one understands eternity. One simply recognizes its existence.