Natalie Clifford Barney Quotes
Born: October 31, 1876
Natalie Clifford Barney, a pioneering force in early 20th-century literary and intellectual circles, forged a legacy of radical innovation. Her philosophy centered on fearless self-expression and the dismantling of societal constraints, advocating for a life lived as a deliberate work of art. Though her salon was a crucible for modernist thought, her visionary principles—embracing authenticity, relentless curiosity, and the audacity to rewrite one’s own narrative—echo powerfully in today’s tech and innovation landscapes. Barney’s quotes resonate because they challenge creators to disrupt conventions, champion unfiltered creativity, and treat every failure as raw material for a bolder future.
Natalie Clifford Barney Quotes (17)
"Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"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."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?"
— Natalie Clifford Barney"Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"To be one's own master is to be the slave of self."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"Would that well-thinking people should be replaced by thinking ones."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"How many inner resources one needs to tolerate a life of leisure without fatigue."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"The advantage of love at first sight is that it delays a second sight."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"Novels are longer than life."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"It is time for dead languages to be quiet."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"Lovers should also have their days off."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"Fatalism is the lazy man's way of accepting the inevitable."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth."
— Natalie Clifford Barney"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."
— Natalie Clifford Barney