Top 100 Andre Maurois Quotes
#1. A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.
Andre Maurois
#2. Marriage makes a man more vulnerable by doubling the expanse of sail exposed to the tempests of social life.
Andre Maurois
#3. Happiness is never there to stay [ ... ] Happiness is merely a respite offered by inquietude.
Andre Maurois
#4. No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.
Andre Maurois
#5. Information is not culture. In the mind of a truly educated person, facts are organized, and they make up a living world in the image of the world of reality.
Andre Maurois
#6. We are almost always the craftsman of our own unhappiness.
Andre Maurois
#7. Even our strongest emotions die, don't you think? And we can look back to the woman we were three years ago with the same curiosity and detachment as if it were someone else.
Andre Maurois
#8. A few days later we went to the opera together to watch my beloved Siegfried. It was a pleasure for me to listen to it beside the man who had become my hero.
Andre Maurois
#9. Genius consists of equal parts of natural aptitude and hard work.
Andre Maurois
#10. Our minds have unbelievable power over our bodies.
Andre Maurois
#11. Ne dites pas trop de mal de vous-meme: on vous croirait. - Don't talk too badly of yourself: they ight believe you.
Andre Maurois
#12. The minds of different generations are as impenetrable one by the other as are the monads of Leibniz.
Andre Maurois
#13. I knew a man who had been virtually drowned and then revived. He said that his death had not been painful.
Andre Maurois
#14. One might have said that reason made him flee from reason.
Andre Maurois
#15. A great man's manias must be respected, because the time required to combat them is too precious to waste.
Andre Maurois
#16. Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
Andre Maurois
#17. We can talk frankly about our defects only to those who recognise our qualities.
Andre Maurois
#18. Few are they who have never had a chance to achieve happiness- and fewer those who have taken that chance.
Andre Maurois
#19. Novelty, the most potent of all attractions, is also the most perishable.
Andre Maurois
#20. A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.
Andre Maurois
#21. We appreciate frankness from those who like us. Frankness from others is called insolence.
Andre Maurois
#23. It is better to teach a few things perfectly than many things indifferently.
Andre Maurois
#24. Yet had Fleming not possessed immense knowledge and an unremitting gift of observation he might not have observed the effect of the hyssop mould. 'Fortune,' remarked Pasteur, 'favors the prepared mind.
Andre Maurois
#25. Medicine is a very old joke, but it still goes on.
Andre Maurois
#26. Housekeeping in common is for women the acid test.
Andre Maurois
#27. In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
Andre Maurois
#28. A true woman loves a strong man because she knows his weaknesses. She protects as much as she is protected.
Andre Maurois
#29. The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author's life.
Andre Maurois
#30. It is restful to leave one's home; not because traveling does not entail varied and difficult daily actions, but because it removes our responsibilities.
Andre Maurois
#31. A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.
Andre Maurois
#33. Either the soul is immortal and we shall not die, or it perishes with the flesh, and we shall not know that we are dead. Live, then, as if you were eternal.
Andre Maurois
#34. Without a family,man,alone in the world, trembles with the cold.
Andre Maurois
#35. The greedy search for money or success will almost always lead men into unhappiness. Why? Because that kind of life makes them depend upon things outside themselves.
Andre Maurois
#36. Two human beings anchored to one another are like two ships shaken by waves; their carcases collide with one another and creak.
Andre Maurois
#37. We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity
romantic love and gunpowder.
Andre Maurois
#38. There are certain persons for whom pure Truth is a poison.
Andre Maurois
#40. 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.
Andre Maurois
#41. 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.
Andre Maurois
#42. It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.
Andre Maurois
#43. There are deserts in every life, and the desert must be depicted if we are to give a fair and complete idea of the country.
Andre Maurois
#44. Every ten years you should delete from your mind a few ideas that your experience has proven to be false, dangerous.
Andre Maurois
#46. [ ... ] marriage is one thing, and love is another ... You need to have a solid canvas; nobody stops you to weave the arabesques ...
Andre Maurois
#47. If you value a man's regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper - and despise it.
Andre Maurois
#48. We console ourselves with several friends for not having found one real one.
Andre Maurois
#49. One has very little influence upon one's children. Their characters are what they are and one can do nothing to change them.
Andre Maurois
#50. The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions.
Andre Maurois
#51. 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.
Andre Maurois
#52. There are very few really brilliant men who have not had at least one madman among their ancestors.
Andre Maurois
#53. Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires
seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage.
Andre Maurois
#54. Experience is valuable only when it has brought suffering and when the suffering has left its mark upon both body and mind.
Andre Maurois
#55. An unsatisfied woman requires luxury, but a woman who is in love with a man will lie on a board.
Andre Maurois
#56. Style is the hallmark of a temperament stamped upon the material at hand.
Andre Maurois
#57. All of us, from time to time, need a plunge into freedom and novelty, after which routine and discipline will seem delightful by contrast.
Andre Maurois
#58. 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.
Andre Maurois
#59. 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.
Andre Maurois
#60. The life of a couple is lived on the mental level of the more mediocre of the two beings who compose it.
Andre Maurois
#62. When you become used to never being alone, you may consider yourself Americanised
Andre Maurois
#63. Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game is 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.
Andre Maurois
#64. The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.
Andre Maurois
#65. He who has found a good wife has found great happiness, but a quarrelsome woman is like a roof that lets in the rain.
Andre Maurois
#66. Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.
Andre Maurois
#67. An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
Andre Maurois
#68. For intelligent people, action often means escape from thought, but it is a reasonable and a wise escape.
Andre Maurois
#69. Art is an effort to create, beside the real world, a more humane world.
Andre Maurois
#70. The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion but rather to know it.
Andre Maurois
#71. 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.
Andre Maurois
#72. An old man, having retired from active life, regains the gaity and irresponsibility of childhood. He is ready to play, he cannot run with his son, but he can totter with his grandson. Our first and last steps have the same rhythm.
Andre Maurois
#73. The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.
Andre Maurois
#74. Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.
Andre Maurois
#75. Only passions can raise a man above the level of the animal.
Andre Maurois
#76. To reason with poorly chosen words is like using a pair of scales with inaccurate weights.
Andre Maurois
#77. And why wander in these labyrinths? Once more, for aesthetic reasons; because this present infinity, these "vertiginous symmetries," have their tragic beauty. The form is more important than the content.
Andre Maurois
#78. You don't love a man for what he says, but love what he says because you love him.
Andre Maurois
#79. People are what you make them. A scornful look turns into a complete fool a man of average intelligence. A contemptuous indifference turns into an enemy a woman who, well treated, might have been an angel.
Andre Maurois
#80. 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.
Andre Maurois
#81. 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.
Andre Maurois
#82. Inspiration in matters of taste will not come twice.
Andre Maurois
#83. Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.
Andre Maurois
#84. A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.
Andre Maurois
#85. A great statesman, like a good housekeeper, knows that cleaning has to be done every morning.
Andre Maurois
#86. A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.
Andre Maurois
#87. We don't love a woman for what she says, we like what she says because we love her.
Andre Maurois
#88. If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain.
Andre Maurois
#89. The longer the road to love, the keener is the pleasure.
Andre Maurois
#91. 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.
Andre Maurois
#92. Men and women are not born inconstant: they are made so by their early amorous experiences.
Andre Maurois
#93. Old age diminishes our strength; it takes away our pleasures one after the other; it withers the soul as well as the body; it renders adventure and friendship difficult; and finally it is shadowed by thoughts of death.
Andre Maurois
#94. 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.
Andre Maurois
#95. He who wants to do everything will never do anything.
Andre Maurois
#96. In a discussion, the difficulty lies, not in being able to defend your opinion, but to know it.
Andre Maurois
#97. A friend loves you for your intelligence, a mistress for your charm, but your family's love is unreasoning; you were born into it and are of its flesh and blood. Nevertheless it can irritate you more than any group of people in the world.
Andre Maurois
#98. Almost all great writers have as their motif, more or less disguised, the passage from childhood to maturity, the clash between the thrill of expectation and the disillusioning knowledge of truth. 'Lost Illusion' is the undisclosed title of every novel.
Andre Maurois
#99. Time is a factor in all action. An imperfect scheme put into action at the proper time is better than a perfect one accomplished too late.
Andre Maurois
#100. The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.
Andre Maurois
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