André Maurois Quotes

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.

Writing should never be allowed to become a substitute for living. Style cannot breath in a void. It should not be forgotten that Dickens was at one time a reporter, Balzac a lawyer's clerk and Tchekov a county doctor. Art is different from life but cannot exist without it.

Telephones are like women. No one really knows anything about them. One fine day, something goes wrong; you try to find out why, no good, you swear, you shake them up a bit and all is well.

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

Great things are not accomplished with physical strength and agility, says Cicero, but through consultation, authority, and the mature wisdom which old age, far from lacking, is endowed with abundantly.

In every young government strength is worth more than ancestral wisdom, but no government can remain young. As it grows older there is more respect for mature men than for old men. The leader who has build his career upon a basis of youth, loses youth. Like the old wolf, he tries to hide his disgrace; he keeps himself fit and affects the fearlessness and excess of a young man; but sooner or later time will make him a senator, then a corpse.

Genius consists of equal parts of natural aptitude and hard work.

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.

A man who is trying sincerely to disentangle the web of human affairs is greatly helped by the nearness of a woman's mind, vigilant, clever, discreet, lucid, which lights up that shadowy half of his world: women's thoughts.

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

A man who works under orders with other men must be without vanity. If he has too strong a will of his own and if his ideas are in conflict with those of his chief, the execution of orders will always be uncertain because of his efforts to interpret them in his own way. Faith in the chief must keep the gang together. Obviously deference must not turn into servility. A chief of staff or a departmental head should be able, if it seems to him (rightly or wrongly) that his superior is making a serious mistake, to tell him so courageously. But this sort of collaboration is really effective only if such frankness has true admiration and devotion behind it. If the lieutenant does not admit that his chief is more experienced and has better judgment than he himself, he will serve him badly. Criticism of the chief by a subordinate must be accidental and not habitual. What must an assistant do if he is sure he is right and if his chief refuses to accept his criticisms? He must obey the order after offering his objections. No collective work is possible without discipline. If the matter is so serious that it can have a permanent effect upon the future of a country, an army, or a commercial enterprise, the critic may hand in his resignation. But this must be done only as a last resort; as long as a man thinks he can be useful he must remain at his post.

Almost all of our fellow-beings deceive us, but a few of us have known the joy of meeting a woman or a man whose sincerity and frankness were genuine, who in almost every situation has behaved according to our wishes, and who in our most difficult moments has not forsaken us. Those few are familiar with that marvelous feeling: confidence. With at least one person they are able for a little while each day to lift the heavy visor of their helmets, breathe freely, and show their faces and their hearts without fear.

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

A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.

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.