André Maurois: Quotes about love

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

André Maurois

Love , Literature

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

André Maurois

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

Love , Age

“An unsatisfied woman requires luxury, but a woman who is in love with a man will lie on a board.”

André Maurois

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

Love , Lie

“It is a great joy to admire someone without reserve; love which is founded upon admiration of the mind as well as the body of the chosen person undoubtedly affords the keenest delight.”

André Maurois

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

Love , Joy , Personality

“Passionate love produces distorted visions of actual people. Men who are too much in love expect such extraordinary happiness from marriage that they are frequently disappointed.”

André Maurois

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

Love , Men , Marriage , People

“No one judges the mistakes of love - so long as they are accompanied by sincere repentance - no one judges them with more understanding than a woman at once irreproachable and sensitive.”

André Maurois

A Time for Silence

Love , Understanding , Sincerity

“The man who truly loves his work returns to it after the briefest rest with a curious kind of voluptuousness. When he is completely absorbed in his job, the end of work seems like the end of life.”

André Maurois

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

Love , Life

“Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul. Upon crossing the shadow line, it is more the desire to act than the power to do so that is lost. Is it possible, after fifty years of experiences and disappointments, to retain the ardent curiosity of youth, the desire to know and understand, the power to love wholeheartedly, the certainty that beauty, intelligence, and kindness unite naturally, and to preserve faith in the efficacy of reason? Beyond the shadow line lies the realm of even, tempered light where the eyes, not being dazzled any more by the blinding sun of desire, can see things and people as they are. How is it possible to believe in the moral perfection of pretty women if you have loved one of them? How is it possible to believe in progress when you have discovered throughout a long and difficult life that no violent change can triumph over human nature and that it is only the most ancient customs and ceremonies that can provide people with the flimsy shelter of civilization? "What's the use?" says the old man to himself. This is perhaps the most dangerous phrase he can utter, for after having said: "What's the use of struggling?" he will say one day: "What's the use of going out?" then: "What's the use of leaving my room?" then: "What's the use of leaving my bed?" and at last comes "What's the use of living?"”

André Maurois

which opens the portals of death.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love , Life , Death , Women

“He who has not spent hours, days, or years with someone he loves cannot know what happiness is, for he is unable to imagine a protracted miracle like this - one which makes out of ordinary sights and events the most enchanted existence.”

André Maurois

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

Love , Imagination , Happiness

“Of women he [Voltaire] has no very high opinion. To judge from his treatment of them, their minds are exclusively occupied by the prospect of making love to handsome young men with good figures, though, being both venal and timid, they are prepared to hire their bodies to old inquisitors or soldiers if, by so doing, they can save their own lives or amass riches. They are inconstant, and will gladly cut off the nose of a husband fondly mourned in order to cure a new lover.”

André Maurois

The Art of Writing

Love , Women , Men , Making love

“There are more love marriages in the United States than in any other country, but Americans are also given to quick and frequent divorces.”

André Maurois

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

Love , Marriage , Country

“The desire for security, very marked in women, draws the weaker among them to men who, by their strength or ability, seem to offer protection and support. In time of war they count a warrior's scalps; in time of peace they hunt for genius or wealth. To the man in love the giving of gifts is a way of asserting his power. The penguin and the banker offer pebbles of varying brilliance to their respective loved ones. The finch presents twigs and leaves to its mate as the young man presents woolen threads in the form of carpets and curtains to his fiancee. The swallow and the woman begin to thing of the nest the moment they have chosen their males.”

André Maurois

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

Love , Women , Men , War

“If you want to be thought anything of amongst Englishmen, you must make yourself see their point of view. They don't care for melancholy people, and have a contempt for sentiment. This applies to love as well as to patriotism and religion.”

André Maurois

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

Love , People , Religion

“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

Love , Strong

“"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)

Love , Money

“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

Love , Life , Wisdom , Faith

“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

Love , Pleasure , Lovers

“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

Love , Children , Health , Feeling

“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

Love , Life , Marriage , Truth

“"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

Love , Life , Happiness