Quotessence
Home / Authors / Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar

Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenBookHadrianIfsMarguerite YourcenarHadrienHumansRomeThinkingDesire

Famous Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

“Je doute que toute la philosophie du monde parvienne à supprimer l'esclavage : on en changera tout au plus le nom. Je suis capable d'imaginer des formes de servitudes pires que les notre parce que plus insidieuses : soit qu'on réussisse à transformer les hommes en machines stupides et satisfaites, qui se croient libres alors qu'elles sont asservies, soit qu'on développe chez eux, à l'exclusion des loisirs et des plaisirs humains, un goût du travail aussi forcené que la passion de la guerre chez les races barbares. A cette servitude de l'esprit, ou de l'imagination humaine, je préfère encore notre esclavage de fait.”

RomeServitudeHadrienEsclavage
Book:Mémoires d'Hadrien
Create image

“Je doute que toute la philosophie du monde parvienne à supprimer l'esclavage : on en changera tout au plus le nom. Je suis capable d'imaginer des formes de servitudes pires que les nôtres parce que plus insidieuses : soit qu'on réussisse à transformer les hommes en machines stupides et satisfaites, qui se croient libres alors qu'elles sont asservies, soit qu'on développe chez eux, à l'exclusion des loisirs et des plaisirs humains, un goût du travail aussi forcené que la passion de la guerre chez les races barbares. A cette servitude de l'esprit, ou de l'imagination humaine, je préfère encore notre esclavage de fait.”

RomeServitudeHadrienEsclavage
Book:Mémoires d'Hadrien
Create image

“ვიცოდი, რომ სიკეთე, ისევე როგორც ბოროტება, ჩვევის, მოხერხებულობისა და გაწაფულობის საქმეა. ისიც ვიცოდი, რომ დროებითი შეიძლება გაგრძელდეს, რომ გარეგანი შიდა სიღრმეებში იჭრება და რომ ნიღაბი საბოლოოდ მაინც სახედ გარდაიქმნება; რადგან ზიზღი, სუსულელე, უმერება, მძვინვარება და ბორგვა ღრმად და ხანგრძლივად იდგამს ფესვებს ადამიანთა სულებში და ვერ ვხედავთ მიზეზებს, რომელთა გამოც ნათელგონიერება, სამართლიანობის გრძნობა და კეთილგანწყობა ასევე ვერ გაიკვლევდა გზას მოკვდავთა გონებაში. რა ფასი ექნებოდა წესრიგს საზღვრებზე, თუ იმ მეკონკე ებრაელსა და ძეხვეულით მოვაჭრე ბერძენს მშვიდობიანი თანაცხოვრების აუცილებლობაში ვერ დავარწმუნებდი.”

LawGood And EvilPolicy Formation
Book:Memoirs of Hadrian
Create image

“A book may lie dormant for fifty years or for two thousand years in a forgotten corner of a library, only to reveal, upon being opened, the marvels or the abysses that it contains, or the line that seems to have been written for me alone. In this respect the writer is not different from any other human being: whatever we say or do can have far-reaching consequences.”

YearsHumansMayHas BeensTwoBookDifferentSeemsLyingLinesHuman BeingsWrittenThousandConsequenceLibraryForgottenCornersFiftyReachingThousand YearsAbyssMe AloneDormant
Author:Marguerite Yourcenar
Create image

“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.”

MindSaidStillsMatterFormProcessDifficultTermClearUnderstoodPrejudiceSeparationTrialsExperimentsSubstanceRoutineFormulasDaringPhasesAlchemistNoirDissolution
Author:Marguerite Yourcenar
Create image

“Sickness disgusts us with death, and we wish to get well, which is a way of wishing to live. But weakness and suffering, with manifold bodily woes, soon discourage the invalid from trying to regain ground: he tires of those respites which are but snares, of that faltering strength, those ardors cut short, and that perpetual lying in wait for the next attack.”

WayTryingWellsLyingSufferingNextWishWaitingCuttingWeaknessIllnessSicknessPerpetualDisgustingWoeTireDiscouragingSnaresGet WellManifoldArdorRespiteFaltering
Book:Hadrian's Memoirs
Create image

“The American child, driven to school by bus and stupefied by television, is losing contact with reality. There is an enormous gap between the sheer weight of the textbooks that he carries home from school and his capacity to interpret what is in them.”

ChildrenHomeRealitySchoolEducationUnited StatesTelevisionLosingCapacityWeightDrivenEnormousContactCarrieGapsBusSheerTextbooks
Book:With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingMeanPersonsCharacterDiesKnownClarityParallelsHallucinationsFictional CharacterParallel Lives
Author:Marguerite Yourcenar
Create image

“One nourishes one's created characters with one's own substance: it's rather like the process of gestation. To give the character life, or to give him back life, it is of course necessary to fortify him by contributing something of one's own humanity, but it doesn't follow from that that the character is I, the writer, or that I am the character. The two entities remain distinct.”

GivingTwoCharacterHumanityCoursesProcessSubstanceEntityContributingGestation
Author:Marguerite Yourcenar
Create image

“Every life is punctuated by deaths and departures, and each one causes great suffering that it is better to endure rather than forgo the pleasure of having known the person who has passed away. Somehow our world rebuilds itself after every death, and in any case we know that none of us will last forever. So you might say that life and death lead us by the hand, firmly but tenderly.”

KnowsWorldPersonsHandsMightLastsLife IsSufferingCausesPleasureKnownCasesForeverEndureLife And DeathOur WorldDeparturePassed Away
Book:With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey
Create image

“Want of passion is, I think, a very striking characteristic of Americans, not unrelated to their predilection for violence. For very few people truly have a passionate desire to achieve, and violence serves as a kind of substitute.”

PeopleThinkingWantKindDesirePassionUnited StatesViolenceAchievePassionateCharacteristicsSubstitutesDesire To AchievePassionate Desire
Book:With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey
Create image

“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.”

WritingYearsKindMayBookTurnsCasesAliveStageTenSticksFingersBreadFirmDoughYeast
Author:Marguerite Yourcenar
Create image

“Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time.”

KnowsMenHumansLittlesSeemsLife IsOrderLossEffortProgressConditionsPeriodsMassErrorsDefeatDisasterRuinsTriumphIndifferenceDisorderHuman ConditionCatastropheMonstrousFelicityProdigies
Book:Memoirs of Hadrian
Create image

“And nevertheless I have loved certain of my masters, and those strangely intimate though elusive relations existing between student and teacher, and the Sirens singing somewhere within the cracked voice of him who is first to reveal a new idea. The greatest seducer was not Alcibiades, afterall, it was Socrates.”

FirstsIdeasCertainVoiceTeacherStudentsMastersSingingRelationIntimateNew IdeasNeverthelessElusiveCrackedSirensTeacher And Student
Book:Memoirs of Hadrian
Create image

“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.”

MayEnoughAbleDesireLeftGrowsWatchesObjectsIllAffectionRichesTechniquePassingPassingsBelovedIndifferenceConquestFacilityAccordMultiplicity
Author:Marguerite Yourcenar
Create image