Frases de André Maurois

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“A felicidade é uma flor que não se deve colher.”

“A leitura de um bom livro é um diálogo incessante: o livro fala e a alma responde.”

“A sinceridade é de vidro e a discrição de diamante”

“Um verdadeiro estadista ostenta a imagem do seu país.”

“A qualidade mais importante em um líder é aquela de ser reconhecido como tal. Todos os líderes cuja aptidão é questionada são claramente desprovidos de força.”

“A civilização outra coisa não é senão a aceitação, por parte dos homens, de convenções comuns.”

“O homem rico tem comensais ou parasitas, o homem poderoso, cortesãos, o homem de acção, camaradas, que também são amigos”

“O homem de acção é antes de tudo um poeta.”

“Os homens entregam a alma como as mulheres o corpo, por zonas sucessivas e bem defendidas.”

“Aquilo que os homens menos vos perdoam é o mal que disseram de vós.”

“O que fizeste para a mulher, isso ela pode esquecer, mas nunca esquecerá aquilo que para ela não fizeste.”

“Certas mulheres pedem a uma amiga para guardar um segredo, somente para difundirem uma notícia.”

“Acima de tudo, nunca tenha medo. O inimigo quer forçá-lo ao recuo, e tem exatamente neste momento medo de você.”

“O casamento é um edifício que deve ser reconstruído todos os dias.”

“A morte não pode ser pensada, pois é ausência de pensamento. Temos de viver como se fôssemos eternos.”

“O matrimónio é algo no qual é necessário trabalhar permanentemente e nunca está pronto.”

“Há em todo o sucesso humano uma parte mal definida de felicidade.”

“A razão de ser de qualquer fé é trazer-nos uma certeza.”

“A certeza de ser amado dá robustez a um espírito tímido, tornando-o natural.”

“Os azares da vida são tais, que toda eventualidade se faz possível.”

“A amizade supõe a confiança, união de pensamentos e esperança.”

“O verdadeiro mal da velhice não é o enfraquecimento do corpo, é a indiferença da alma.”

“Muitas pessoas estragam a vida com a imaginação da infelicidade que as ameaça.”

“O amor nos outros é para nós quase sempre incompreensível.”

“Poucos são os que nunca tiveram uma oportunidade de alcançar a felicidade e menos ainda os que aproveitaram essa oportunidade.”

“No matrimónio, uma profunda análise mútua conduz a uma infinita querela.”

“O nosso amor erra à procura de um ser nobre sobre o qual se possa fixar.”

“O verdadeiro matrimónio é uma mistura particular de amor, amizade, consideração e sensualidade.”

“A ciência? Ao fim e ao cabo, o que é ela senão uma longa e sistemática curiosidade?”

“Todos os negócios que me propõem são maus, porque se fossem bons não mos propunham.”

“Os mais verdadeiros e os mais vivos amores são sempre os mais inesperados.”

“Não basta ter espírito. É preciso tê-lo o bastante para abster-se de tê-lo em demasia.”

“Os negócios são a combinação da guerra e do desporto.”

“Só podemos falar francamente sobre nossos defeitos para aqueles que reconhecem nossas qualidades.”

“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.”

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

“There must be no premature renunciation, physical or emotional. The heart, like the body, needs exercise. Naturally there can be no deliberate stirring up of emotion, but why, merely for reasons of age, should one deny oneself those that can be genuinely experienced? Because old men in love are ridiculous? They are ridiculous only if they forget that they are old men. There is nothing ridiculous about two old people really in love. Each still finds in the other those qualities which were admired in youth. Tender consideration, affection, and admiration have no age. In fact, it often happens that, when youth and its passions have vanished, love takes on an asceticism which is delightful. Sensual misunderstandings disappear with physical desire and jealousy with youth; impetuosity wanes with the body's strength. From the remnants of a stormy youth may be created an agreeable old age. Thus the existence of a couple resembles a river which leaps dangerously over jagged rocks near its source, but whose clear waters flow more slowly as it approaches the sea, its broad surface reflecting the poplars along its banks and the stars at night.”

“Reading, like all work, has its rules. A perfect knowledge of a few writers and a few subjects is more valuable than a superficial one of a great many. The fine points of a piece of writing are seldom apparent at first reading. In youth, one should search among books as one searches the world for friends, and once these friends are found, chosen, and adopted, one must go into retirement with them. Intimacy with Montaigne, Saint Simon, Retz, Balzac, or Proust would be enough to enrich one's whole life.”

“"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."”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A married man is only half a man.”

“Men can usefully undertake and properly accomplish a common task only when one of them continually directs the activities of all towards the same end. This is self-evident when actions which must follow a rhythm are involved. It would be useless for a gang of men laying rails or a rowing-crew to exert themselves if a foreman or coxswain did not control their movements. Every non-directed collective action turns rapidly into confusion and disorder. All who have fought in a battle know how necessary it is that someone should be in command; and what is true of the army is true of the dockyard, the factory, the newspaper office, the whole country. Whenever men are required to act together, there must be a chief.”

“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.”

“I believe that communities which lack the feminine influence are apt to fall into abstraction and the madness of systems which, being false, require violence to put into practice. We have, alas, seen too many examples of this. A masculine civilization like that of ancient Greece perishes through politics, metaphysics, and vanity. Women alone can give these doctrinary drones a sense of the real and simple values of the hive. No true civilization is possible without the collaboration of the two sexes, but there can be no real collaboration unless the differences between the sexes are accepted and a mutual respect established.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A man and a woman who, in their young days, agree to have done with sentimental life thereby renounce the search for adventure, the intoxication of new encounters, and the amazing refreshment produced by falling in love again. Their most vital source of energy is cut off; they are doomed to premature insensibility. Their life, scarcely begun, is finished. Nothing can break the monotony of an existence made up of burdens and duties. No further hope, no surprises, no conquests. Their one love will soon be tainted by the cares of housekeeping and the children's education. They will reach old age without ever having known the joys of youth. Marriage destroys romantic love which alone could justify it.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“As far as possible the duty of a leader is to foresee dissatisfaction and to remedy injustice before complaints are made. To accomplish this he must maintain close contact with the men he controls. Let him go into the trenches if he is a general; let him arrive at the factory with his workmen now and then if he is the manager. He must have some imagination; an understanding of other men's lives is necessary to him, so that he may be able to protect those under him from unnecessary suffering. The secret of gaining their affection is to feel affection for them and to be able to do their jobs as well as they do them themselves. Men endure taking orders, and even like it, if the orders are given intelligently.”

“Marriage is not at all what romantic lovers imagine it to be; it is an institution founded upon an instinct; to be successful, it requires not only physical attraction, but will-power, patience, and the always difficult acceptance of "the other"; finally, if these conditions are fulfilled, a beautiful and lasting affection can be established - a unique and, to those who have never known it, incomprehensible mingling of love, friendship, sensuality, and respect, without which there is no true marriage.”

“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.”

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

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