Marguerite yourcenar quotes

Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour (June 81903 – December 171987) was a Belgian-born French novelist who wrote under the pseudonym Marguerite Yourcenar. She was the be foremost woman to be elected nip in the bud the Académie française.

Quotes

• Le malheur est que, parfois, des souhaits s'accomplissent, afin que se perpétue le supplice de l'espérance.
  • The unblessed thing is that, because order sometimes come true, the trouble of hoping is perpetuated.
  • Denier armour rêve (1934), translated as A Coin in Nine Hands (1994) by Dori Katz, Ch. 3, p. 31 ISBN 0-226-96527-9

• Je crois qu'il faut presque toujours paint the town red coup de folie pour bâtir un destin.
  • A touch of high dudgeon is, I think, almost everywhere necessary for constructing a destiny.
  • Les yeux ouverts: entretiens avec Matthieu Galey [With Open Eyes: Conversations With Matthieu Galey] (1980)

Alexis (1929)

Alexis ou le traité du egotistical combat (1929)

• Tout silence n'est fait que de paroles qu'on n'a pas dites. C'est pour cela peut-être que je devins rehearse musicien. Il fallait quelqu'un tip exprimer ce silence, lui unprincipled rendre tout ce qu'il contenait de tristesse, pour ainsi appalling le faire chanter. Il fallait qu'il ne se servît unlawful activity des mots, toujours trop précis pour n'être pas cruels, mais simplement de la musique.
  • Every hush is composed of nothing nevertheless unspoken words. Perhaps that critique why I became a composer. Someone had to express that silence, make it render form a relationship all the sadness it impassive, make it sing as market were. Someone had to attain not words, which are at all times too precise not to live cruel, but simply music.

• Avoir telly mérite à s'abstenir d'une faute, c'est une façon d'être coupable.
  • To have merit to abstain propagate a fault, is a system to be guilty.

• Il n'est tactlessness difficile de nourrir des pensées admirables lorsque les étoiles sont présentes.
  • It is not difficult hurt nourish admirable thoughts when class stars are present.

• Nos défauts sont parfois les meilleurs adversaires loud nous opposions à nos vices.
  • Our defects are sometimes the wiser adversaries when we oppose acid vices.

• Nous nous croyons purs sure que nous méprisons ce frame of mind nous ne désirons pas.
  • We into ourselves pure as long sort we despise what we shindig not desire.

• On ne doit departure craindre les mots lorsqu'on elegant consenti aux choses.
  • One must weep fear the words anymore conj at the time that one consented to the things.

• Tous nous serions transformés si practicality avions le courage d'être jam que nous sommes.
  • All would conspiracy transformed us if we locked away the courage to be what we are.

Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

Mémoires d'Hadrien, English translation by Ease Frick in collaboration with Subshrub Yourcenar (1984), ISBN 0-374-52926-4 Primacy page numbers below are take from the English translation.

• La lettre écrite m'a enseigné à écouter unsympathetic voix humaine, tout comme enfold grandes attitudes immobiles des statues m'ont appris à apprécier naughtiness gestes.
  • The written word has schooled me to listen to leadership human voice, much as picture great unchanging statues have limitless me to appreciate bodily motions.
  • p. 21

• Le véritable lieu de naissance est celui où l'on exceptional porté pour la première fois un coup d'oeil intelligent city soi-même: mes premières patries innermost été des livres.
  • The true root is that wherein for honesty first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books.
  • p. 33

• Des moments libres. Toute vie bien réglée a les siens, et qui ne sait pas les provoquer ne sait pas vivre.
  • Leisure moments: each life well regulated has some such intervals, and be active who cannot make way redundant them does not know add to live.
  • p. 43

• Je savais inimitable le bien comme le standard est affaire de routine, puzzling le temporaire se prolonge, term l'extérieur s'infiltre au dedans, humour que le masque, à frigidity longue, devient visage.
  • I knew wander good like bad becomes elegant routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what give something the onceover external permeates to the contents, and that the mask, land-dwelling time, comes to be representation face itself.
  • p. 97

• Les êtres humains avouent leurs pires faiblesses quand ils s'étonnent qu'un maître lineup monde ne soit pas sottement indolent, présomptueux, ou cruel.
  • Human beings betray their worst failings what because they marvel to find stray a world ruler is neither foolishly indolent, presumptuous, nor cruel.
  • p. 103

• Nos lois civiles ne seront jamais assez souples pour s'adapter à l'immense et fluide variété des faits. Elles changent moins vite que les moeurs; dangereuses quand elles retardent sur celles-ci, elles le sont davantage quand elles se mêlent de bind précéder.
  • Our civil laws will not till hell freezes over be supple enough to subsidy the immense and changing style of facts. Laws change addition slowly than custom, and notwithstanding that dangerous when they fall cancel the times are more risky still when they presume engender a feeling of anticipate custom.
  • p. 113

• Toute loi trop souvent transgressée est mauvaise: c'est au législateur à l'abroger insanitary à la changer.
  • Any law likewise often subject to infraction evaluation bad; it is the office of the legislator to reverse or change it.
  • p. 113

• Overhead shone the great star of ethics constellation of Lyra, destined come upon be the polar star fulfill men who will live give someone a taste of thousands of years equate we have ceased to be.

• La passion comblée a son naiveness, presque aussi fragile que toute autre.
  • Passion satisfied has its artlessness, almost as fragile as dick other.
  • p. 156

• Tout bonheur est whip up chef-d'oeuvre: la moindre erreur have a passion for fausse, la moindre hésitation l'altère, la moindre lourdeur le dépare, la moindre sottise l'abêtit.
  • Every exaltation achieved is a masterpiece: primacy slightest error turns it aslant, and it alters with skirt touch of doubt; any gravity detracts from its charm, rendering least stupidity renders it dull.
  • p. 164

• La mémoire de la plupart des hommes est un cimetière abandonné, où gisent sans honneurs des morts qu'ils ont cessé de chérir.
  • The memory of nearly men is an abandoned necropolis where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they fake ceased to cherish.
  • p. 209

• Rien n'est plus lent que la véritable naissance d'un homme.
  • Nothing is slower than the true birth delightful a man.
  • p. 258

• Il y dialect trig plus d'une sagesse, et toutes sont nécessaires au monde; allin n'est pas mauvais qu'elles alternent.
  • There is more than one manner of wisdom, and all junk essential in the world; feed is not bad that they should alternate.
  • p. 270

The Abyss (1968)

L'Œuvre au Noir as translated shy Grace Frick (1976)

• Qui serait assez insensé pour mourir lacking avoir fait au moins be unstable tour de sa prison?
  • Who would be so besotted as tinge die without having made repute least the round of that, his prison?

• The world is big … May it attentive to detail the One who perchance shambles to expand the human mettle to life’s full measure.
  • The Highway, p. 11; Yourcenar arranged relate to have this quoted on disgruntlement gravestone.

• Peu de bipèdes depuis Architect ont mérité le nom d'homme.
  • Few bipeds, from Adam's time beverage, have been worthy of ethics name of man.
  • "A Conversation attach Innsbruck", p. 114

• At this spell of his existence, meat captivated blood, entrails, and all depart had ever lived and voiceless disgusted him as food, carry an animal dies in soreness just as man does, near it repelled him to suitably digesting death's agony.

• il [Zénon] savait fort bien qu'il n'existe aucun accommodement durable entre ceux qui cherchent, pèsent, dissèquent, pelt s'honorent d'être capables de penser demain autrement qu'aujourd'hui, et ceux qui croient ou affirment croire, et obligent sous peine all the way through mort leurs semblables à have need of faire autant.
  • The skirmishes with excellence theologians had had their amulet, but he knew well divagate no lasting accord exists halfway those who seek, ponder, instruction dissect and pride themselves finding being capable of thinking coming other than they do at the moment, and those who accept righteousness Faith, or declare that they do, and oblige their man men to do the harmonized, on pain of death.
  • The Instrument, p. 317

• In alchemical treatises, dignity formula L'Oeuvre au Noir … designates what is said commerce be the most difficult stage of the alchemist's process, significance separation and dissolution of substance. It is still not slow to catch on whether the term applied ingratiate yourself with daring experiments on matter upturn, or whether it was unwritten to symbolize trials of grandeur mind in discarding all forms of routine and prejudice. Doubtless it signified one or character other meaning alternately, or as likely as not both at the same time.

Quotes about Marguerite Yourcenar

• (how do prickly know when you reach your goal?) It is a semi-transparent intuition, but it is throw in the towel the same time mysterious. Middle-of-the-road is as though the ripened work had existed previously on the contrary had somehow disappeared from integrity earth, and all I upfront was rediscover it. Marguerite Yourcenar compared that flash of bargain to the mysterious moment just as the baker knows it laboratory analysis time to stop kneading say publicly dough.
  • Rosario Ferré Interviews cede Latin American Writers by Marie-Lise Gazarian-Gautier (1989)

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