Books are not life, only its ashes.
Marguerite YourcenarRead
The founding of libraries was like constructing more public granaries, amassing reserves against a spiritual winter which by certain signs, in spite of myself, I see ahead.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Libraries serve as essential resources for knowledge, preparing us for future challenges.
In this quote, Marguerite Yourcenar compares the establishment of libraries to building granaries, suggesting that libraries store knowledge and wisdom to sustain society during difficult times. Just as granaries protect against physical hunger, libraries safeguard against intellectual and spiritual poverty, highlighting the importance of preparing for future challenges through learning and information access.
Themes
LibrariesKnowledgeEducationWisdomSpiritual Winter
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on the importance of education, one might say, 'Founding libraries is like constructing more public granaries, preparing us for the intellectual challenges ahead.'
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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