Quote

Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors by trying at the outset to imitate them by daring then to be original by destroying one's first productions.

Andre Maurois

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Andre Maurois
Age: 82 †
Born: 1885
Born: July 26
Died: 1967
Died: October 7
Biographer
Critic
Essayist
Historian
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Elboeuf
Herzog
Émile Salomon Wilhelm
Andre Maurois
Émile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog
Difficult
Destroying
Firsts
Slowly
Book
Productions
First
Originals
Must
Original
Outset
Great
Trade
Imitate
Writing
Learned
Authors
Trying
Reading
Daring

More quotes by Andre Maurois

Image
A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.
Andre Maurois
Image
[...] marriage is one thing, and love is another...You need to have a solid canvas nobody stops you to weave the arabesques.
Andre Maurois
Image
In a discussion, the difficulty lies, not in being able to defend your opinion, but to know it.
Andre Maurois
Image
Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.
Andre Maurois
Image
It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.
Andre Maurois
Image
A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.
Andre Maurois
Image
A great man's manias must be respected, because the time required to combat them is too precious to waste.
Andre Maurois
Image
If you create a character, you create a destiny.
Andre Maurois
Image
Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.
Andre Maurois
Image
If, in New York, you arrive late for an appointment, say, I took a taxi.
Andre Maurois
Image
The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author's life.
Andre Maurois
Image
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
Image
Few are they who have never had a chance to achieve happiness- and fewer those who have taken that chance.
Andre Maurois
Image
When you become used to never being alone, you may consider yourself Americanised
Andre Maurois
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Style is the outcome of constraint.
Andre Maurois
Image
A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.
Andre Maurois
Image
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
Image
Inspiration in matters of taste will not come twice.
Andre Maurois