Quotes by Natalie Clifford Barney

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

“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.”

“When youre 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 spar”

“Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual.”

“Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction”

“Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth.”

“How many inner resources one needs to tolerate a life of leisure without fatigue”

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

“To be ones own master is to be the slave of self.”

“Lovers should also have their days off.”

When youre 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.

Its necessary to use suffering. Otherwise, one is used by it.

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

Fatalism is a lazy mans way of accepting the inevitable.

Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth.

Paris has always seemed ... the only city where you can live and express yourself as you please.

“ When youre 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.”