Quotes by "Natalie Clifford Barney"

Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.

Fatalism is a lazy man's way of accepting the inevitable.

When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.

At first, when an idea, a poem, or the desire to write takes hold of you, work is a pleasure, a delight, and your enthusiasm knows no bounds. But later on you work with difficulty, doggedly, desperately. For once you have committed yourself to a particular work, inspiration changes its form and becomes an obsession, like a love-affair… which haunts you night and day! Once at grips with a work, we must master it completely before we can recover our idleness.

The advantage of love at first sight is that it delays a second sight.

When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.

Fatalism is the lazy man's way of accepting the inevitable.

There are intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?