114 quotes
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
"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."
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939)
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.
Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble) (1918)