Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

Any truth creates a scandal.

We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.

Every invalid is a prisoner.

I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily

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.

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 forgetfulness.

Men who care passionately for women attach themselves at least as much to the temple and to the accessories of the cult as to their goddess herself.

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.

A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.