Yourcenar Books Quotes & Sayings

Leaving behind books is even more beautiful - there are far too many children. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Maxims serve the wise;
folly enslaves fools. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I've always been quite an eccentric character. I love going out and partying; I'm a very sociable creature. — Jess Glynne

Ambition without direction is like milk without a cup. — Gregory Maguire

Israel is run by war criminals. — Medea Benjamin

Like everyone else I have at my disposal only three means of evaluating human existence: the study of self, which is the most difficult and most dangerous method, but also the most fruitful; the observation of our fellowmen, who usually arrange to hide secrets where none exist; and books, with the particular errors of perspective to which they inevitably give rise. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Now that I'm gettin' old enough to get some money, I'd like to have some money. I don't get much made, I need to conquer a big chunk of money. Not quit playin' but quit playin' so hard. — Muddy Waters

Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience. — H.L. Mencken

The founding of libraries was like constructing more public granaries, amassing reserves against a spiritual winter which by certain signs, in spite of myself, I see ahead ... — Marguerite Yourcenar

I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers - the emotional storage is done very early on. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Even if nonpolluting power were feasible and abundant, the use of energy on a massive scale acts on society like a drug that is physically harmless but psychically enslaving. A community can choose between Methadone and "cold turkey"-between maintaining its addiction to alien energy and kicking it in painful cramps-but no society can have a population that is hooked on progressively larger numbers of energy slaves and whose members are also autonomously active. — Ivan Illich

The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools. — Marguerite Yourcenar

What is she doing here? I wondered. Hasn't she had enough green-upping? — Lisa Papademetriou

If we separate our mundane needs (doing) from God's best gift, his loving presence (being), then we are overspiritualizing prayer. If we ask nothing of God, we are left adrift in an evil world. Such a position may feel spiritual because it seems unselfish, but it is unbiblical because it separates the real world of our desires from God's world. The kingdom can't come because it is floating. By discounting the spiritual and physical worlds, Neoplatonism did exactly what the Enlightenment did. The only difference was Neoplatonism valued the spiritual while the Enlightenment valued the physical. So the church is influenced by Neoplatonism (the physical isn't important), and the world is shaped by the Enlightenment (the spiritual isn't important). Both perspectives stifled honest, person-to-person praying in the church. — Paul E. Miller

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. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books. — Marguerite Yourcenar

The short and obscene sentence of Poseidonius about the rubbing together of two small pieces of flesh, which I have seen you copy in your exercise books with the application of a good schoolboy, does no more to define the phenomenon of love than the cord touched by the finger accounts for the infinite miracle of sounds. Such a dictum is less an insult to pleasure than to the flesh itself, that amazing instrument of muscles, blood, and skin, that red-tinged cloud whose lightning is the soul. — Marguerite Yourcenar

I've been a longtime admirer of Condoleezza Rice, because I like her articulateness and style - her toughness and rigor. — Camille Paglia

You have no idea what it is to have anybody wonderful fond of you, unless you have been got down and rolled upon by the lonely feelings that I have mentioned as having once got the better of me. — Charles Dickens

Books are not life, only its ashes. — Marguerite Yourcenar

There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty. — Marguerite Yourcenar

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions. On the other hand, but more slowly, life has thrown light for me on the meaning of books. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Since the photographic medium has been digitized, a fixed definition of the term photography has become impossible. — Andreas Gursky