Andre Maurois

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

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.

The true sporting spirit has always something religious about it.

Conquest brings no lasting happiness unless the person conquered was possessed of free will. Only then can there be doubt and anxiety and those continual victories over habit and boredom which produce the keenest pleasures of all. The comely inmates of the harem are rarely loved, for they are prisoners. Inversely, the far too accessible ladies of present-day seaside resorts almost never inspire love, because they are emancipated. Where is love's victory when there is neither veil, modesty, nor self-respect to check its progress? Excessive freedom raises up the transparent walls of an invisible seraglio to surround these easily acquired ladies. Romantic love requires women, not that they should be inaccessible, but that their lives should be lived within the rather narrow limits of religion and convention. These conditions, admirably observed in the Middle-Ages, produced the courtly love of that time. The honoured mistress of the chateau remained within its walls while the knight set out for the Crusades and thought about his lady. In those days a man scarcely ever tried to arouse love in the object of his passion. He resigned himself to loving in silence, or at least without hope. Such frustrated passions are considered by some to be naive and unreal, but to certain sensitive souls this kind of remote admiration is extremely pleasurable, because, being quite subjective, it is better protected against deception and disillusion.

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.

"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.

There is much to be said concerning retirement. Some men cannot survive it because they have not prepared themselves for it. For the man who has retained his curiosity, retirement in old age can be the most enjoyable period of his life; but he must be aware of the emptiness of public renown and desire the peace of obscurity; he must still have the wish to learn and understand; in his village, his garden, or his house, he must have some restricted personal occupation. The wise man, after having given all his time to his public activities, now devotes himself entirely to his personal affairs and development; and this will be easier for him if he has been able to interest himself in poetry and the beauties of nature, even during his busiest years. For myself, I cannot imagine a pleasanter old age than one spent in the not too remote country where I could reread and annotate my favorite books. "The mind," says Montaigne, "must thrive upon old age as the mistletoe upon a dead oak."

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.

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.

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 know that the king thought conquered, would still be king, but that a self-created emperor needed the support of continuous victories.

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

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

"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.

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

To amuse is not to teach. The object of teaching is to erect a framework of knowledge in a child's mind and gradually to bring the child as near as may be to the average level of intelligence. Later in life the facts taught by experience and new discoveries will add themselves to this framework. It is wrong to attempt to upset this natural order and to appeal to a child's mind by diverting it with the spectacle of modern life. Teaching by means of pictures, radio, and the cinema is in itself ineffective; these methods must not be used unless they involve (and this is possible) some effort or special enthusiasm. That which is learned without difficulty is soon forgotten, and for the same reason, oral instruction which does not require the pupil's personal participation is almost always rather useless. Eloquence slides in and out of young minds. To listen is not to work. (Naturally this does not apply to the teaching of modern languages.)

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

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.

Faults of the mind increase with old age as do those of the features. An old man is incapable of taking up new ideas because he lacks the power to assimilate them, so he clings with crabbed tenacity to the opinions of his maturity. He pompously believes himself able to deal with any problem. Contradiction infuriates him, and he regards it as lack of respect. "In my days," he says, "we never contradicted our elders." He forgets that in his day these same words were spoken to him by his grandfather. Unable to interest himself in what is happening round him and thereby keep himself up to date, he tells stories of his past over and over again; and these are so boring to his younger listeners that they end by avoiding him altogether. Solitude is the greatest evil of old age; one by one lifelong friends and relative disappear, and they cannot be replaced. The desert widens, and death would be pleasant if its rapid approach were not so curiously threatening.

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.

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.