The truth seems to be that monogamous marriage, mitigated in certain countries by divorce and in certain other by tolerance of infidelity, persists i… - André Maurois

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

… 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.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at the courts of the last Kings of France, idle men and women of infinite subtlety took pleasure in analysing very minutely each other's feelings and thoughts. The result was this wonderful literature that goes from La Bruyère and Pascal to Stendhal and Marcel Proust. France became a country of very refined taste. The part played by her in modern Europe was in a way similar to that played by Greece in the ancient world; she took pleasure in a delicious simplicity. Other literatures may have had more strength, more romantic violence; none had that mysterious perfection.