# Marguerite Yourcenar's most beautiful lines

From Fires to Memoirs of Hadrian and The Abyss: Marguerite Yourcenar's most quoted lines on love, solitude and writing, with the book they come from.

- 0 votes · 11 items
- Sep 23, 2026 · Elise Leclercq
- https://even.best/en/l/4703/marguerite-yourcenar-s-most-beautiful-lines

## Top 11

1. **There is no unhappy love: we only possess what we do not possess. There is no happy love: what we possess, we no longer possess.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Fires (1936).
2. **We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with pain.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Fires (1936).
3. **Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been able to stay alone.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Fires (1936).
4. **Nothing to fear. I have hit bottom. I cannot fall lower than your heart.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Fires (1936).
5. **How dull it would have been to be happy!** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Fires (1936).
6. **We come to every event of our life as beginners.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Fires (1936).
7. **One is never entirely alone: unfortunately, one is always with oneself.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Alexis (1929).
8. **The written letter taught me to listen to the human voice, just as the great still poses of statues taught me to appreciate gestures.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), 'Animula vagula blandula'.
9. **One of the best ways to recreate a man's thought: reconstruct his library.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Notebooks on Memoirs of Hadrian.
10. **Whatever one does, one always rebuilds the monument in one's own way. But it is already a lot to use only authentic stones.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Notebooks on Memoirs of Hadrian.
11. **Who would be foolish enough to die without at least having walked round his prison?** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Abyss (1968), Zeno.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.