"Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul..."
- Marguerite Yourcenar
"This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?"
"Tout bonheur est un chef-d'oeuvre: la moindre erreur le fausse, la moindre hésitation l'altère, la moindre lourder le dépare, la moindre sottise l'abêtit."
"Le souvenir n'est qu'un regard posé de temps en temps sur des êtres devenus intérieurs,mais qui ne dépendent pas de la mémoire pour continuer d'exister."
"Happiness is a masterpiece: the slightest error compromises it, the slightest hesitation undermines it, the slightest excess corrupts it, the slightest vulgarity defiles it."
"I was glad that our venerable, almost formless religions, drained of all intransigence and purged of savage rites, linked us mysteriously to the most ancient secrets of man and of earth, not forbiddin..."
"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."
"Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children."
"Attianus had been right in his conjectures: the virgin gold of respect would be too soft without some alloy of fear."
"Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul, and is also the only one in which the player has to abandon himself to the body's ecstasy."