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.
Marguerite YourcenarBut happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts.
Marguerite YourcenarI think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.
Marguerite YourcenarThis city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
Marguerite YourcenarFor my part I have sought liberty more than power, and power only because it can lead to freedom. What interested me was not a philosophy of the free man (all who try that have proved tiresome), but a technique: I hoped to discover the hinge where our will meets and moves with destiny, and where discipline strengthens, instead of restraining, our nature.
Marguerite Yourcenar