1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. André Maurois

André Maurois Quotes
page 2

André Maurois was a French author.



✵ 26. July 1885 – 9. October 1967
André Maurois photo
André Maurois: 202 quotes4 likes

André Maurois Quotes

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

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

“A married man seeks to please his wife and not God.”

André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

“… Hence, Paul Morand's generalization to the effect that French writers are never younger, never more free from constraint, than when they have passed their sixtieth birthday. By that time they have broken free from the romantic agonies of youth and turned their backs on that pursuit of honors which, in a country where literature plays a social role, absorbs too much of their energies during the years of maturity.”

André Maurois

The Art of Writing

“"I should not care to be married for my money," said Lucie. "Oh, strange creature!" said the doctor, "you would like to be loved for your face alone, that is to say, for the position in space of the albuminoids and fatty molecules placed there by the working of some Mendelian heredity, but you would dislike to be loved for your fortune, to which you have contributed by your labor and your domestic virtues.”

André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

“The degree of our worthiness to become a free people shall be determined by our ability to respect a lawful leader, to agree to the existence of an opposition, to listen to its arguments, and especially to put the nation's good above all party prejudices and private interest. Liberty is not one of man's inalienable rights' it is a desirable but difficult acquisition, and must be contended for constantly.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

“A great man's manias must be respected, because the time required to combat them is too precious to waste. A departmental head and his chief reach a state of symbiosis; the clever official knows that words must never be spoken in the chief's presence because they stir up painful complexes or rouse his anger. He knows how to present a proposition so that the chief will be interested and give a favorable opinion. He is clearly aware of the latter's mistakes and weaknesses, respects him no less for them, but he does his best to make up for deficiencies.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

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

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

“The best way to honor friends who have died is to treat our living ones with equal affection.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

“The life of a couple is lived on the mental level of the more mediocre of the two beings who compose it.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

“There is no permanent equilibrium in human affairs. Faith, wisdom, and art allow one to attain it for a time; then outside influences and the souls' passions destroy it, and one must climb the rock again in he same manner. This vacillation round a fixed point is life, and the certainty that such a point exists is happiness. As the most ardent love, of one analyses its separate moments, is made up of innumerable minute conflicts settled invariably by fidelity, so happiness, if one reduces it to its important elements, is made up of struggles and anguish, and always saved by hope.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

“Must an artist live in the world or out of it? I believe this to be an unanswerable question. Total retirement, natural to the Saint, is injurious to most artists. They work marvelously so long as there are materials at hand. Goethe has further advice: "Solitude is a wonderful thing when one is at peace with oneself and when there is a definite task to be accomplished."”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

“The longer the road to love, the keener is the pleasure to be experienced by the sensitive lover.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

“There is little to be said of seniority. It is evident that when men grow older they acquire experience, unless they are completely idle, stupid, or too obstinate to learn anything. But there are many types of old men, and no one has ever maintained that, in order to pick out the best of the, it is enough to look at their birth certificates. Therefore appointments have to be made.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

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

André Maurois

Quoted in The Aging American
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

“The great classic writers, it will be said, sought rather to proclaim universal truths than to leave their imprint on them.”

André Maurois

The Art of Writing

“The friendship of two young people," says Goethe somewhere, "is delightful when the girl likes to learn and the boy to teach.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

“Not all men and women can devote themselves to those whom they respect. Some are jealous of superiority and are far more interested in revealing the faults than in imitating the virtues of a noble character. Others fear the option of a mind that is too lucid and prefer to be friends with someone less exacting.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

“Dramatists have always made fun of the friendship between a husband and his wife's lover. But is it so comic? These two men undoubtedly have more to say to one another than the lover and his mistress. They get on perfectly well, and it is often the husband's presence that makes endurable the intolerable boredom of certain affairs of this sort. Cases have been known where a break occurred almost immediately following the husband's withdrawal from the scene.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

“To reason with poorly chosen words is like using a pair of scales with inaccurate weights.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

“It is true that in thus giving his love to fragile beings man becomes more vulnerable. He who passionately loves a woman, children, or his country gives hostages to fortune. He will be tortured from then on, though he be in good health, put down though he be powerful, forced to ask for mercy though he be courageous and hardened to suffering. Fortune has him in her grasp. He is forced to watch with burning anxiety the sickness of those he love tenderly - a suffering far worse than that caused by any malady of his own, because his physical powers are intact. He wants to help, but feels utterly useless. He would like to surrender himself instead of his precious hostages, and sickness - arrogant and tyrannical - chooses its victims relentlessly. In spite of himself he feels like a coward and a traitor, because he has escaped. This is the cruellest of all human torments.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

“The aspiring author, whether genius or not, should never let a day pass without writing at least a few lines.”

André Maurois

The Art of Writing

“When one is already happy it is important not to lose the virtues which have produced happiness. When they are successful, many men and women forget prudence, moderation, and kindness - qualities which were instrumental in their success. They are arrogant or thoughtless; an excessive self-confidence prevents them from accomplishing difficult tasks, and they soon become unworthy of their good fortune. They are surprised when their luck changes from good to bad. The ancient practice of sacrifice to the gods in return for happiness was a wise one. Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos, threw his precious ring into the sea as a sacrifice, and there are several ways of throwing the ring of Polycrates into the sea. The simplest is to be modest.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

“The truth is that the family, like marriage, is one of those institutions whose very importance renders them complex. Abstract ideas are the only simple ones, because they have little to do with life. The family is not the arbitrary creation of a legislator; it is a natural consequence of the division of the species into two sexes, of the human child's protracted helplessness, of maternal love which ministers to this helplessness, of paternal love which is far more artificial and recent in human history, and composed just as much of love for the mother as of that for the child.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Family Life

“"A man's life is happy," says Pascal, "if he begins by being in love and ends by being ambitious." It will be still happier if, after all his ambitions have been satisfied, it ends in tranquility.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

“As the experienced chauffeur can tell by listening to his motor that one of its cylinders is not firing properly, so the born leader knows when his subordinates are not serving him, seeks the cause, and finds it.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

“Happiness flourishes where there is happiness, and love withers quickly in an atmosphere of constraint and gloom.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

“Marriage makes a man more vulnerable by doubling the expanse of sail exposed to the tempests of social life.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

“It is often difficult to fill an active healthy man's leisure. He is bored when not working; he paces the floor like a caged animal and sinks naturally into vices which are merely the means of getting numberless vivid sensations from his body with which to fill his empty hours. Modern civilization, with its inventions and machines, has increased the number of these hours, and we must learn how to use them.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

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

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Family Life

“There must be no premature renunciation, physical or emotional. The heart, like the body, needs exercise. Naturally there can be no deliberate stirring up of emotion, but why, merely for reasons of age, should one deny oneself those that can be genuinely experienced? Because old men in love are ridiculous? They are ridiculous only if they forget that they are old men. There is nothing ridiculous about two old people really in love. Each still finds in the other those qualities which were admired in youth. Tender consideration, affection, and admiration have no age. In fact, it often happens that, when youth and its passions have vanished, love takes on an asceticism which is delightful. Sensual misunderstandings disappear with physical desire and jealousy with youth; impetuosity wanes with the body's strength. From the remnants of a stormy youth may be created an agreeable old age. Thus the existence of a couple resembles a river which leaps dangerously over jagged rocks near its source, but whose clear waters flow more slowly as it approaches the sea, its broad surface reflecting the poplars along its banks and the stars at night.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

“Reading, like all work, has its rules. A perfect knowledge of a few writers and a few subjects is more valuable than a superficial one of a great many. The fine points of a piece of writing are seldom apparent at first reading. In youth, one should search among books as one searches the world for friends, and once these friends are found, chosen, and adopted, one must go into retirement with them. Intimacy with Montaigne, Saint Simon, Retz, Balzac, or Proust would be enough to enrich one's whole life.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

“"Thinking is easy," said Goethe, "acting is difficult, and to put one's thought into action is the most difficult thing in the world." And Tolstoy: "It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writing than to put one principle into practice."”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Thinking

“We are always repeating ancestral signs which are quite useless now. When a great actress wants to express hate she draws back her charming lips and shows her canine teeth, an unconscious sign of cannibalism. We shake hands with a friend to prevent him using it to strike us, and we take off our hats because our ancestors used to humbly offer their heads, to the bigwigs of those days, to be cut off.”

André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

“Woman's great strength lies in being late or absent. Presence immediately reveals the weak points of our beloved; when she is absent she become one of the sylph-like figures of our adolescence whom we endowed with perfection.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

“Some people believe themselves to be independent of surrounding influences because their lives have made rebels of them. But rebellion is not a guarantee of independence. On the contrary, it is an acute form of prejudice. The writer who has been too much dominated in childhood will put himself forward as a free thinker in his attacks on religion and family life, but this revolt is the revolt of a slave.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

“We don't go to school to learn, but to be soaked in the prejudices of our class, without which we should be useless and unhappy.”

André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

“The old writer, like the old actor, is a master of his craft. Youthfulness of style is no more than a matter of technique.”

André Maurois

The Art of Writing

“Marriage is not something that can be accomplished all at once; it has to be constantly reaccomplished. A couple must never indulge in idle tranquility with the remark: "The game is won; let's relax." The game is never won. The chances of life are such that anything is possible. Remember what the dangers are for both sexes in middle age. A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

“To feminine eyes a man's prestige, or his fame, envelops him in a luminous haze which obscures his faults. The triumphs of an aviator, an actor, a football player, an orator are often responsible for the beginning of a love affair.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

“A married man is only half a man.”

André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

“If you have observed nature, you would have proved that the question of the numbers of mates is certainly not a question of arithmetic. With gnats, ten females are born to one male. Now gnats are not polygamous. Nine out of those females dies spinsters. It is only the old maids who bite us, from which one sees that celibacy engenders ferocity among insects as well as among women.”

André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

“I believe that communities which lack the feminine influence are apt to fall into abstraction and the madness of systems which, being false, require violence to put into practice. We have, alas, seen too many examples of this. A masculine civilization like that of ancient Greece perishes through politics, metaphysics, and vanity. Women alone can give these doctrinary drones a sense of the real and simple values of the hive. No true civilization is possible without the collaboration of the two sexes, but there can be no real collaboration unless the differences between the sexes are accepted and a mutual respect established.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

“Nietzsche was a genius because he delighted in persecution. Karl Marx was a dangerous maniac. It is only when the feelings of discontent which he tries to explain coincide with those of a whole class, or a whole nation, that the impassioned theorist becomes a prophet, or a hero; while, if he confines himself to explaining that he would rather have been born an Emperor, they shut him up.”

André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

“Agreeable men are those who are interested in everything; men who accomplish things, who finish their tasks, are those who, during a given period of time, interest themselves in one thing only. In America these men are said to possess "single-track minds"' their tenacity and their obsession are sometimes boring, but they succeed, by repeated attacks, in demolishing the obstacles that hinder their progress.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

“A man and a woman who, in their young days, agree to have done with sentimental life thereby renounce the search for adventure, the intoxication of new encounters, and the amazing refreshment produced by falling in love again. Their most vital source of energy is cut off; they are doomed to premature insensibility. Their life, scarcely begun, is finished. Nothing can break the monotony of an existence made up of burdens and duties. No further hope, no surprises, no conquests. Their one love will soon be tainted by the cares of housekeeping and the children's education. They will reach old age without ever having known the joys of youth. Marriage destroys romantic love which alone could justify it.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

“The head of a free nation's government must direct towards obscure and shifting objectives the actions of a group of people who are not compelled to obey him by anything except the fear of anarchy, which fear does not exist in times f social peace. He can do nothing without being criticized by opponents whose desire to put someone in his place makes them the more pitiless. His lieutenants are not respectful assistants; they are his equals and his eventual successors.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

“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.”

André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

“Marriage is not at all what romantic lovers imagine it to be; it is an institution founded upon an instinct; to be successful, it requires not only physical attraction, but will-power, patience, and the always difficult acceptance of "the other"; finally, if these conditions are fulfilled, a beautiful and lasting affection can be established - a unique and, to those who have never known it, incomprehensible mingling of love, friendship, sensuality, and respect, without which there is no true marriage.”

André Maurois

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

“To interest a Frenchman in a boxing match you must tell him that his national honor is at stake. To interest an Englishman in a war you need only suggest that it is a kind of a boxing match. Tell us that the Hun is a barbarian, we agree politely, but tell us that he is a bad sportsman and you rouse the British Empire.”

André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)