Andre Maurois

There is no happiness without forgetfulness. I have never known a real man of action to be unhappy during action. How could he be? Like a child at play, he stops thinking of himself.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

It is wrongly held by many that to be happy one must have the admiration and respect of a great many people; but the esteem of one's own circle is essential. Stéphane Mallarmé, deeply beloved by a few disciples, was far happier than a celebrated man who knows that his reputation is questioned by those whom he admires. The monastery had brought peace to innumerable souls through its singleness of thought and purpose.

— Andre Maurois

He who has not spent hours, days, or years with someone he loves cannot know what happiness is, for he is unable to imagine a protracted miracle like this - one which makes out of ordinary sights and events the most enchanted existence.

— Andre Maurois

An unsatisfied woman requires luxury, but a woman who is in love with a man will lie on a board.

— Andre Maurois

One of the most serious obstacles to happiness is the awkwardness of modern man, with his mind full of doctrines and abstract formulas, when he attempts to re-establish contact with real emotions. Animals and unsophisticated people achieve happiness more naturally, because their desires are simpler and truer. Civilized man, a parrot enslaved by his chattering, ceaselessly inoculates himself with loves and hatreds which he does not actually fee.

— Andre Maurois

To interest a Frenchman in a boxing match you must tell him that his national honor is at stake. To interest an Englishman in a war you need only suggest that it is a kind of a boxing match. Tell us that the Hun is a barbarian, we agree politely, but tell us that he is a bad sportsman and you rouse the British Empire.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

The true sporting spirit has always something religious about it.

— Andre Maurois

We don't go to school to learn, but to be soaked in the prejudices of our class, without which we should be useless and unhappy.

— Andre Maurois

It is unprecedented for the men who made a revolution to remain in power after it is over. Yet one still finds revolutionaries: that proves how badly history is taught.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

We are always repeating ancestral signs which are quite useless now. When a great actress wants to express hate she draws back her charming lips and shows her canine teeth, an unconscious sign of cannibalism. We shake hands with a friend to prevent him using it to strike us, and we take off our hats because our ancestors used to humbly offer their heads, to the bigwigs of those days, to be cut off.

— Andre Maurois

British conversation is like a game of cricket or a boxing match; personal allusions are forbidden like hitting below the belt, and anyone who loses his temper is disqualified.

— Andre Maurois

If you want to be thought anything of amongst Englishmen, you must make yourself see their point of view. They don't care for melancholy people, and have a contempt for sentiment. This applies to love as well as to patriotism and religion.

— Andre Maurois

You see us poor Englishmen searching hard for the solution of a problem when there isn't one. You may think that the Irish want certain definite reforms, and that they will be happy and contented the day they get them; but not at all. What amuses them is discussion itself, plotting in theory. They play with the idea of Home Rule; if we gave it them, the game would be finished and they would invent another, probably a more dangerous one.

— Andre Maurois

A married man is only half a man.

— Andre Maurois

A married man seeks to please his wife and not God.

— Andre Maurois

If you have observed nature, you would have proved that the question of the numbers of mates is certainly not a question of arithmetic. With gnats, ten females are born to one male. Now gnats are not polygamous. Nine out of those females dies spinsters. It is only the old maids who bite us, from which one sees that celibacy engenders ferocity among insects as well as among women.

— Andre Maurois

"I should not care to be married for my money," said Lucie. "Oh, strange creature!" said the doctor, "you would like to be loved for your face alone, that is to say, for the position in space of the albuminoids and fatty molecules placed there by the working of some Mendelian heredity, but you would dislike to be loved for your fortune, to which you have contributed by your labor and your domestic virtues.

— Andre Maurois

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

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

— Andre Maurois

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

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

— Andre Maurois

The whole reason of this War is because the Germans have no sense of humor.

— Andre Maurois

The officer of today has seen active service, it's true but as a matter of fact it is quite sufficient in war to have good health and no more imagination than a fish. It is in peace-time that one ought to judge a soldier.

— Andre Maurois

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.

— Andre Maurois

Whoever wants to be a hero ought to drink brandy.

— Andre Maurois

A gentleman is never in a hurry.

— Andre Maurois

Incoherence is not the monopoly of madness: all the main ideas of a sane man are irrational erections build up, for better or worse, to express his deepest feelings.

— Andre Maurois

Nietzsche was a genius because he delighted in persecution. Karl Marx was a dangerous maniac. It is only when the feelings of discontent which he tries to explain coincide with those of a whole class, or a whole nation, that the impassioned theorist becomes a prophet, or a hero; while, if he confines himself to explaining that he would rather have been born an Emperor, they shut him up.

— Andre Maurois

Medicine is a very old joke, but it still goes on.

— Andre Maurois

England will pay ten thousand a year to a lawyer or a banker, but when she has splendid fellows like me who conquer empires and keep them for her, she only gives them just enough to keep their polo ponies.

— Andre Maurois

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

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

The great classic writers, it will be said, sought rather to proclaim universal truths than to leave their imprint on them.

— Andre Maurois

Style is the outcome of constraint.

— Andre Maurois

The aspiring author, whether genius or not, should never let a day pass without writing at least a few lines.

— Andre Maurois

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.

— Andre Maurois

The cinema may have a specific beauty of its own, but it does not permit that constant re-reading, that meditative brooding, those turning-back to passages heavily charged with meaning, which form the special pleasure of the novel-reader.

— Andre Maurois

Almost all the great novels 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 the truth.

— Andre Maurois

One can love a real woman after having loved her imagined counterpart. Similarly, one can adapt oneself to a society which, previously, one held in contempt.

— Andre Maurois

The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author's life. "The characters crowd onto the page", writes Mauriac, "there to accomplish all those things which the personal destiny of the author has kept at bay.

— Andre Maurois

The truth is that, from the immense spectacle of the world, each novelists retains the one adventure which enable shim to give expression to his own essential self, just as the painter sees in nature only pictures painted in his manner.

— Andre Maurois

… 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.

— Andre Maurois

The old writer, like the old actor, is a master of his craft. Youthfulness of style is no more than a matter of technique.

— Andre Maurois

Of women he [Voltaire] has no very high opinion. To judge from his treatment of them, their minds are exclusively occupied by the prospect of making love to handsome young men with good figures, though, being both venal and timid, they are prepared to hire their bodies to old inquisitors or soldiers if, by so doing, they can save their own lives or amass riches. They are inconstant, and will gladly cut off the nose of a husband fondly mourned in order to cure a new lover.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

...It's much better to run the risk of a few kisses before marriage, for they at least leave some memories." "… or some regrets.

— Andre Maurois

A little unsure of himself in her presence, he always addressed her in questions, a habit common to parents, sovereigns, generals, and teachers.

— Andre Maurois

It's better to arouse pity than envy.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.

— Andre Maurois

No one judges the mistakes of love - so long as they are accompanied by sincere repentance - no one judges them with more understanding than a woman at once irreproachable and sensitive.

— Andre Maurois

Our poor bodies have strength and resources that we learn to know only when we are in the gravest situations.

— Andre Maurois

...Sometimes with men, their pride can override their hearts..."

— Andre Maurois

The best part of our misfortunes - our moral unhappiness, I mean - comes from the fact that we have words to describe them... We give them body, we even go so far as to give them a body which is not their own, for the words of common language do not always correspond to our sufferings, which may be of a new and distinct sort. … And then, too, words prolong and preserve sorrows that should long have been forgotten. Animal nature forgets....

— Andre Maurois

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

Business is a combination of war and sport.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

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

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

Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game 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

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

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

— Andre Maurois

What shall we know of our death? 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, and do not believe that your life has changed merely because it seems proved that the Earth is empty. You do not live in the Earth, you live in yourself.

— Andre Maurois

Two world wars have destroyed in a few years the material and spiritual capital accumulated by centuries of work. The nineteenth century had hoped to turn man, by virtue of education, into a reasoning being: a half-century of ferocity has proved that a cruel, primitive beast still resides in him.

— Andre Maurois

Revolt against a tyrant is legitimate; it can succeed. Revolt against human nature is doomed to failure.

— Andre Maurois

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

It is a great joy to admire someone without reserve; love which is founded upon admiration of the mind as well as the body of the chosen person undoubtedly affords the keenest delight.

— Andre Maurois

Happiness flourishes where there is happiness, and love withers quickly in an atmosphere of constraint and gloom.

— Andre Maurois

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

Love born of anxiety resembles a thorn shaped so that efforts to pull it out of one's flesh merely cause it to penetrate more deeply therein.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

Most of us have to conquer and ceaselessly reconquer the person whom we desire. It is therefore necessary to arouse love in that person.

— Andre Maurois

Byron says that it is easier to die for the woman one loves than to live with her.

— Andre Maurois

It is easy to be admired when one remains inaccessible.

— Andre Maurois

The longer the road to love, the keener is the pleasure to be experienced by the sensitive lover.

— Andre Maurois

It only requires a glance at the advertisements in American magazines to understand how strong and how continuous is woman's preoccupation with her conquest of man.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

In restaurants, the duration of silence between couples is too often proportionate to the length of their life together.

— Andre Maurois

Why, when I have won her, do I continue to woo her? Because, though she belongs to me, she is not and never will be mine.

— Andre Maurois

Clearly, the central argument of the opponents to marriage is that it is an institution whose purpose is to stabilize something that cannot be stabilized, to make something last that will not last. All are agreed that physical love is as natural an instinct as huger or thirst, but the permanence of love is not instinctive. If, as is the case with so many men, physical love must have change, then why the promise of a life's devotion?

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

The life of a couple is lived on the mental level of the more mediocre of the two beings who compose it.

— Andre Maurois

Civilizations founded upon polygamy have always given way to those founded upon monogamy. Polygamy weakens men and diminishes the charm of the community in which it is practiced; and in any case it is foreign to the tastes and requirements of our modern women.

— Andre Maurois

The truth seems to be that monogamous marriage, mitigated in certain countries by divorce and in certain other by tolerance of infidelity, persists in our Western civilization as the solution which entails the least suffering for the greatest number of people.

— Andre Maurois

Passionate love produces distorted visions of actual people. Men who are too much in love expect such extraordinary happiness from marriage that they are frequently disappointed.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

Auguste Comte defines the feminine sex as the affective or emotional sex, and the male sex as the effective or active sex. This must be understood as meaning that with women there is a much close connection between mind and body. Woman's thought are less abstract than man's.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

Balzac says that many young husbands are so ignorant of women that they make him think of orang-outangs trying to play the violin.

— Andre Maurois

A true woman loves a strong man because she knows his weaknesses. She protects as much as she is protected.

— Andre Maurois

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.

— Andre Maurois

Nothing in our daily life will last if neglected; houses, stuffs, friendships, pleasures. Roofs fall in, love comes to an end. A tile needs re-fastening, a joint must be repaired, a misunderstanding cleared up. Otherwise bitterness is created; feelings deep down in the soul become centers of infection, and one day, during a quarrel, the abscess breaks, and each is horrified by the picture of himself or herself discovered in the other's mind.

— Andre Maurois

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.

— Andre Maurois

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.

— Andre Maurois

If I had to preach a sermon on the family I would take for my text this phrase of Paul Valery's: "In every family there is concealed a specific interior boredom which causes its members to escape and live their own lives. There is also in every family an ancient and powerful force which manifests itself when the group is gathered in the dining-room for its evening meal, when its members feel free to be completely themselves.

— Andre Maurois

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

The leveling influence of mediocrity and the denial of the supreme importance of the mind's development account for many revolts against family life. There are many occasions when great men are convinced that, in order to fulfill their destinies, they must escape from the warmth and indulgence of their own families.

— 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

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

Human beings are lazy and it very often happens that one wearies of a new-born emotion for no valid reason unless there is some restraint to stimulate and stabilize it.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

Not all men and women can devote themselves to those whom they respect. Some are jealous of superiority and are far more interested in revealing the faults than in imitating the virtues of a noble character. Others fear the option of a mind that is too lucid and prefer to be friends with someone less exacting.

— Andre Maurois

Well fitted for friendship is he whom men have not disgusted with mankind, and who, believing and knowing that there are a few noble men, a few great minds, a few delightful souls scattered through the crowd, never tires of searching for them, and loves them even before he has found them.

— Andre Maurois

We do not completely love those at whom we cannot smile. There is something inhuman in absolute perfection which overwhelms the mind and heart, which commands respect, but keeps friendship at a distance through discouragement and humiliation. We are always glad when a great man reassures us of his humanity by possessing a few peculiarities.

— Andre Maurois

What men call friendship is only social intercourse, an exchange of favours and good offices; it comes down to a commercial dealing in which self-esteem always expects to profit.

— Andre Maurois

Human nature is such that the spectacle of another's weakness awakens even in the best of us a feeling of power which contains, along with the sincerest pity, an almost imperceptible mingling of pleasure.

— Andre Maurois

In the misfortunes of our best friends, we always find something not unpleasing.

— Andre Maurois

Disinterestedness is a necessary attribute to real friendship and it is the duty of one friend to guess another's problems and render assistance before it is asked. If our friends have needs that we can satisfy, we should relieve them of the necessity of seeking our help. Apart from the satisfaction usually produced by an action, this permanent ability to give pleasure is perhaps the only advantage of wealth and power.

— Andre Maurois

True friendship implies full confidence, which may only be completely given or completely withdrawn. If friendship has continually to be analyzed, nursed, and cured, it will cause more anguish than love itself, without having love's strength and its remedies. And if this confidence is ill-placed? Well - I would rather be betrayed by a false friend than deceive a true one.

— Andre Maurois

Does absolute reliance carry with it a complete exchange of confidences? I believe that true friendship cannot exist otherwise.

— Andre Maurois

There is not one who speaks of us in our presence as he does in our absence," wrote Pascal. "All affection is based on this mutual deception, and few friendships would survive if we knew what our friends were saying of us behind our backs.

— Andre Maurois

There is an excellent rule to follow; quarrel, not with the person who said the things (you can never be sure they were said), but with the person who has told of their being said.

— Andre Maurois

Friendship is the positive and unalterable choice of a person whom we have singled out for qualities that we most admire.

— Andre Maurois

A successful marriage puts an end to feminine friendships; but if marriage is a failure, the young woman must have others to confide in.

— Andre Maurois

Dramatists have always made fun of the friendship between a husband and his wife's lover. But is it so comic? These two men undoubtedly have more to say to one another than the lover and his mistress. They get on perfectly well, and it is often the husband's presence that makes endurable the intolerable boredom of certain affairs of this sort. Cases have been known where a break occurred almost immediately following the husband's withdrawal from the scene.

— 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

Between a man and a woman, collaboration and admiration are more natural than competition. The woman accepts the secondary role willingly; she gives the man what he needs in the way of courage and moral support.

— Andre Maurois

The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.

— Andre Maurois

To reason with poorly chosen words is like using a pair of scales with inaccurate weights.

— Andre Maurois

Pascal said that if geometry stirred us emotionally as much as politics we would not be able to expound it so well.

— Andre Maurois

There are very few men who do not reckon the cost to themselves of a system of taxes before approving it.

— Andre Maurois

Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true; everything that is not puts us in a rage.

— Andre Maurois

There is no absurdity or contradiction to which passion may not lead a man. When love or hate takes control, reason must submit and then discover justifications for their folly.

— Andre Maurois

Some people believe themselves to be independent of surrounding influences because their lives have made rebels of them. But rebellion is not a guarantee of independence. On the contrary, it is an acute form of prejudice. The writer who has been too much dominated in childhood will put himself forward as a free thinker in his attacks on religion and family life, but this revolt is the revolt of a slave.

— Andre Maurois

Thinking is easy," said Goethe, "acting is difficult, and to put one's thought into action is the most difficult thing in the world." And Tolstoy: "It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writing than to put one principle into practice.

— Andre Maurois

Knowledge is ours only if, at the moment of need, it offers itself to the mind without syllogisms or demonstrations for which there is no time.

— Andre Maurois

The art of thinking is also the art of believing, because no human being at the present stage of civilization could safely call all his individual and social beliefs into question again or submit them to his conscience. To change all one's opinions is a mental diversion which requires leisure for its indulgence. In order to live a life of action, man must accept most of the moral, social, and religious laws which have been recognized as necessary by his predecessors.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

To work is to transform or move things or creatures in ways that will render them more useful or more beautiful; it is also to study the laws governing these transformations, formulate them or apply them.

— Andre Maurois

Agreeable men are those who are interested in everything; men who accomplish things, who finish their tasks, are those who, during a given period of time, interest themselves in one thing only. In America these men are said to possess "single-track minds"' their tenacity and their obsession are sometimes boring, but they succeed, by repeated attacks, in demolishing the obstacles that hinder their progress.

— Andre Maurois

It is better to teach a few things perfectly than many things indifferently, and an overloaded curriculum is useless. The object of instruction is not to produce technicians, but good active minds.

— Andre Maurois

"Teaching," wrote Alain, "must be determinedly slow in pace." This phrase is full of meaning for some modern educators with a dangerous tendency towards neglecting the ancient culture of the race, a necessary foundation for all education, and towards stressing recent doctrines and happenings. Information is not culture, and young men need culture much more than they need information.

— Andre Maurois

Must an artist live in the world or out of it? I believe this to be an unanswerable question. Total retirement, natural to the Saint, is injurious to most artists. They work marvelously so long as there are materials at hand. Goethe has further advice: "Solitude is a wonderful thing when one is at peace with oneself and when there is a definite task to be accomplished."

— Andre Maurois

The art of resting is a part of the art of working. A man who is tired and greatly in need of rest cannot do any good work. We are all familiar with those terrible mornings after sleepless nights when our brains refuse to function. It would be useless then to attempt to apply the principles of the art of working. Those principles presuppose mind and body to be in good condition. The human organism cannot live without alternating work and rest.

— Andre Maurois

It is often difficult to fill an active healthy man's leisure. He is bored when not working; he paces the floor like a caged animal and sinks naturally into vices which are merely the means of getting numberless vivid sensations from his body with which to fill his empty hours. Modern civilization, with its inventions and machines, has increased the number of these hours, and we must learn how to use them.

— Andre Maurois

The man who truly loves his work returns to it after the briefest rest with a curious kind of voluptuousness. When he is completely absorbed in his job, the end of work seems like the end of life.

— Andre Maurois

In ancient and respected monarchies the transmission of power is accomplished peacefully, and the hereditary leader enjoys, in the estimation of his subject, an added natural prestige of incalculable value. The high position occupied by the king of England is due to such prestige. Napoleon, who wished to found a dynasty, fully realized this; he knew that the king thought conquered, would still be king, but that a self-created emperor needed the support of continuous victories.

— Andre Maurois

Paul Valéry has no hesitation in saying that the greatest evils today are elections and diplomas.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

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.

— Andre Maurois

Nothing is so discouraging to subordinates as a chief who hesitates. "Firmness," said Napoleon, "prevails in all things."

— Andre Maurois

Tell only what is necessary to the person one must tell, and only when it must be told.

— Andre Maurois

"Nothing," wrote General de Gaulle, "strengthens authority so much as silence." Speech dilutes thought; it allows one's courage to leak away - in short, it dissipates the concentration that is required.

— Andre Maurois

A leader should have a quick intelligence. 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. Sometimes time is so important that it becomes the principal consideration.

— Andre Maurois

It was said of President Wilson that he had faith in humanity but distrusted all men. The true leader distrusts humanity but has faith in a few men.

— Andre Maurois

As the experienced chauffeur can tell by listening to his motor that one of its cylinders is not firing properly, so the born leader knows when his subordinates are not serving him, seeks the cause, and finds it.

— Andre Maurois

The head of a free nation's government must direct towards obscure and shifting objectives the actions of a group of people who are not compelled to obey him by anything except the fear of anarchy, which fear does not exist in times f social peace. He can do nothing without being criticized by opponents whose desire to put someone in his place makes them the more pitiless. His lieutenants are not respectful assistants; they are his equals and his eventual successors.

— Andre Maurois

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

— Andre Maurois

The degree of our worthiness to become a free people shall be determined by our ability to respect a lawful leader, to agree to the existence of an opposition, to listen to its arguments, and especially to put the nation's good above all party prejudices and private interest. Liberty is not one of man's inalienable rights' it is a desirable but difficult acquisition, and must be contended for constantly.

— Andre Maurois

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.

— Andre Maurois

"Old age is a tyrant," said La Rochefoucauld, "who forbids indulgence in the pleasures of youth under penalty of death." First of all, those of love are prohibited. Old men and old women have the utmost difficulty in inspiring love, though they be full of spirit and vigor. When affairs of this sort do exist, it must be determined how great a part is played by respect, admiration, and abnegation.

— Andre Maurois

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

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

— Andre Maurois

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.

— Andre Maurois

The art of growing old is the art of being regarded by the oncoming generations as a support and not as a stumbling-block, as a confidant and not as a rival.

— Andre Maurois

The dead are friends whom death is powerless to take from us. Great writers are immortal companions who can embellish our old age as they enchanted our young days. Music, too, is an extraordinarily faithful friend. To those of us who have lost our faith in human nature, it offers refuge in other pleasant worlds.

— Andre Maurois

"A man's life is happy," says Pascal, "if he begins by being in love and ends by being ambitious." It will be still happier if, after all his ambitions have been satisfied, it ends in tranquility.

— Andre Maurois

No great amount of experience is required to discover that 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

Among the idle rich, boredom is one of the most common causes of unhappiness. People who have difficulty in earning their living may suffer greatly, but they are not bored. Wealthy men and women become bored when they depend upon the theater for their enjoyment instead of making their own lives interesting.

— Andre Maurois

The best way to honor friends who have died is to treat our living ones with equal affection.

— Andre Maurois