Quotes from Andre Maurois

A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.

Every ten years you should delete from your mind a few ideas that your experience has proven to be false, dangerous.

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.

Happiness is never there to stay [...] Happiness is merely a respite offered by inquietude.

Two human beings anchored to one another are like two ships shaken by waves; their carcases collide with one another and creak.

A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.

marriage is one thing, and love is another...You need to have a solid canvas; nobody stops you to weave the arabesques...

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.

The friendship of two young people,' says Goethe somewhere, 'is delightful when the girl likes to learn and the boy to teach.' It will perhaps be said that this virgin curiosity is no more than unconscious physical desire; but what does it matter, if this desire sharpens the mind and deadens conceit?

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

He loved books as other men love women, or opium, or tobacco: they were as a soothing drug to make him forget life.

Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.

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.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

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.

Above all things never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.

Live as if you were eternal.

The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author's life.

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.

To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it.

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.

The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion but rather to know it.

A great man's manias must be respected, because the time required to combat them is too precious to waste.

Lost Illusion is the undisclosed title of every novel.