“What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”

Antimémoires, preface (1967)
This preface paraphrases a line of dialogue from his own earlier work: "A man is what he hides: a miserable little pile of secrets."
Original: (fr) L'homme est ce qu'il cache : un misérable petit tas de secrets.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 2, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets." by André Malraux?
André Malraux photo
André Malraux 37
French novelist, art theorist and politician 1901–1976

Related quotes

George Bernard Shaw photo

“The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
Context: The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry photo

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

Les pierres du chantier ne sont en vrac qu’en apparence, s’il est, perdu dans le chantier, un homme, serait-il seul, qui pense cathédrale.
Pilote de Guerre (1942) (translated into English as Flight to Arras)

Blaise Pascal photo

“Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Source: Pensées and Other Writings

Michel De Montaigne photo

“In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.”

Book I, Ch. 14
Essais (1595), Book I

Arlo Guthrie photo
Tom Robbins photo
Wilhelm Reich photo

“The great man, then, knows when and in what he is a little man.”

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: You are different from the really great man in only one thing: The great man, at one time, also was a very little man, but he developed one important ability: he learned to see where he was small in his thinking, and actions. Under the pressure of some task which was dear to him he learned better and better to sense the threat that comes from his smallness and pettiness. The great man, then, knows when and in what he is a little man.

Stephen King photo
François Bernier photo

“There was no middle state. A man must be of the highest rank or live miserably.”

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Peter Greenaway photo

Related topics