Books are not life, only its ashes.
Marguerite YourcenarRead
This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the haunting presence of past lives and forgotten dreams within a city.
Marguerite Yourcenar's quote conveys a deep sense of the interplay between the living and the dead within an urban landscape. By invoking 'ghosts, murderers, and sleepwalkers', she suggests that the city is inhabited by both memories and figures of the past, prompting the listener to ponder their own existence and dreams amid these layers of history. It is a call to introspection about one's place in a world shaped by those who came before us.
Themes
CityGhostsDreamPastExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about urban history, one might say, 'As Marguerite Yourcenar observed, this city belongs to ghosts, prompting us to consider its past.'
More from Marguerite Yourcenar
All quotes βMeditation upon death does not teach one how to die; it does not make the departure more easy, but ease is not what I seek. Beloved boy, so willful and brooding, your sacrifice will have enriched not my life but my death. ... Centuries as yet unborn within the dark womb of time would pass by thousands over that tomb without restoring life to him, but likewise without adding to his death, and without changing the fact that he had been.
Marguerite YourcenarRead
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 YourcenarRead
The 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 YourcenarRead
When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.
Marguerite YourcenarRead
Passion such as hers is all consent, asking little in return. I had merely to enter a room where she was to see her face take on that peaceful expression of one who is resting in bed. If I touched her, I had the impression that all the blood in her veins was turning to honey.
Marguerite YourcenarRead
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