Natalie Clifford Barney

"If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it."

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

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

"I am beginning to have a healthy dread of possessions, be it of a country, a house, a being or even an idea. If we are bothered by possessions we cannot really live either from without or from within; we are the possession of our possessions. All wars and most loves come from the possessive instinct. Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men: that you may belong to everything and everything be yours inclusive of yourself. Could we, and we can, have the vital necessities for all, we should do away with this cry of class and begin to differentiate between individuals. Individual superiority can alone feed the soul and give back through some materialisation of itself this individualised wealth of being."

"We know all their gods; they ignore ours. What they call our sins are our gods, and what they call their gods, we name otherwise."

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