Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.
Marguerite YourcenarAll happiness is a work of art: the smallest error falsifies it, the slightest hesitation alters it, the least heaviness spoils it, the slightest stupidity brutalizes it.
Marguerite YourcenarA being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
Marguerite YourcenarThe landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself composite, made up of equal parts of instinct and training. Here and there protrude the granite peaks of the inevitable, but all about is rubble from the landslips of chance.
Marguerite Yourcenar