Andre Maurois Quotes

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.

The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.

We can talk frankly about our defects only to those who recognise our qualities.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.

We appreciate frankness from those who like us. Frankness from others is called insolence.

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.

A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.

If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.

If, in New York, you arrive late for an appointment, say, "I took a taxi".

A true woman loves a strong man because she knows his weaknesses. She protects as much as she is protected.

To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it.

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.

Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.

There are certain persons for whom pure Truth is a poison.

If you create a character, you create a destiny.

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force.

We don't love a woman for what she says, we like what she says because we love her.

The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with it in a book.

Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.

Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.

Every ten years you should delete from your mind a few ideas that your experience has proven to be false.

Like a bird, when his cage is opened, stays on his perch, dazzled by freedom, the postponed traveler does not see that his cage, with its bars of anxiety, it is open.

Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record.

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.

One has very little influence upon one's children. Their characters are what they are and one can do nothing to change them.

Art is an effort to create, beside the real world, a more humane world.

Sincerity is glass, discretion is diamond.

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us.

Men and women are not born inconstant: they are made so by their early amorous experiences.

You don't love a man for what he says, but love what he says because you love him.

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.

Modesty and unselfishness - these are the virtues which men praise - and pass by.

He who has found a good wife has found great happiness, but a quarrelsome woman is like a roof that lets in the rain.

We console ourselves with several friends for not having found one real one.

Style is the hallmark of a temperament stamped upon the material at hand.

A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.

If you value a man's regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper - and despise it.

Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original; by destroying one's first productions.

The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.

To desire to be perpetually in the society of a pretty woman until the end of one's days, is as if, because one likes good wine, one wished always to have one's mouth full of it.

No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.

Learning is nothing without cultivated manners, but when the two are combined in a woman, you have one of the most exquisite products of civilization.

British conversation is like a game of cricket or a boxing match; personal allusions are forbidden like hitting below the belt, and anyone who loses his temper is disqualified.

The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion but rather to know it.

All of us, from time to time, need a plunge into freedom and novelty, after which routine and discipline will seem delightful by contrast.

Experience is valuable only when it has brought suffering and when the suffering has left its mark upon both body and mind.

Style is the outcome of constraint.