Andre Maurois

If you create a character, you create a destiny.

— Andre Maurois

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us.

— Andre Maurois

Style is the hallmark of a temperament stamped upon the material at hand.

— Andre Maurois

A great statesman, like a good housekeeper, knows that cleaning has to be done every morning.

— Andre Maurois

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

For intelligent people, action often means escape from thought, but it is a reasonable and a wise escape.

— Andre Maurois

Few are they who have never had a chance to achieve happiness- and fewer those who have taken that chance.

— Andre Maurois

In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people

— Andre Maurois

We don't love a woman for what she says, we like what she says because we love her.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

There are deserts in every life, and the desert must be depicted if we are to give a fair and complete idea…

— Andre Maurois

All of us, from time to time, need a plunge into freedom and novelty, after which routine and discipline will seem delightful…

— Andre Maurois

The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom…

— Andre Maurois

“And why wander in these labyrinths? Once more, for aesthetic reasons; because this present infinity, these "vertiginous symmetries," have their tragic beauty.…

— André Maurois

Time is a factor in all action. An imperfect scheme put into action at the proper time is better than a perfect…

— Andre Maurois

It is restful to leave one's home; not because traveling does not entail varied and difficult daily actions, but because it removes…

— Andre Maurois

“The friendship of two young people,' says Goethe somewhere, 'is delightful when the girl likes to learn and the boy to teach.'…

— Andre Maurois

Almost all great writers have as their motif, more or less disguised, the passage from childhood to maturity, the clash between the…

— Andre Maurois

Marriage is not something that can be accomplished all at once; it has to be constantly reaccomplished. A couple must never indulge…

— Andre Maurois

Stupidity is a factor to be reckoned with in human affairs. The true leader always expects to encounter it, and prepares to…

— Andre Maurois

Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.

— Andre Maurois

Marriage makes a man more vulnerable by doubling the expanse of sail exposed to the tempests of social life.

— Andre Maurois

Novelty, the most potent of all attractions, is also the most perishable.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

We console ourselves with several friends for not having found one real one.

— Andre Maurois

We can talk frankly about our defects only to those who recognise our qualities.

— Andre Maurois

People are discontent; men are troubled; and the literature is excellent.

— Andre Maurois

I knew a man who had been virtually drowned and then revived. He said that his death had not been painful.

— Andre Maurois

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.

— Andre Maurois

There are very few really brilliant men who have not had at least one madman among their ancestors.

— Andre Maurois

The minds of different generations are as impenetrable one by the other as are the monads of Leibniz.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

There are certain persons for whom pure Truth is a poison.

— Andre Maurois

Art is an effort to create, beside the real world, a more humane world.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

Only passions can raise a man above the level of the animal.

— Andre Maurois