André Maurois (1885–1967) pseudonym of Émile Herzog, was a French biographer, novelist, and essayist. He is best known for biographies that uphold the narrative interest of novels.
Born in Elbeuf to a well-to-do family of textile manufacturers from Alsace who settled in Normandy after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Maurois served as a liaison officer with the British army during World War I.
Maurois began his literary career with two books that launched his literary reputation: Les Silences du Colonel Bramble (1918; The Silences of Colonel Bramble) and Les Discours du Docteur O’Grady (1920; The Speeches of Dr O’Grady.) Drawing upon his experience with British troops during World War I, these books are celebrated for their shrewd and affectionate observation of the British character. A devoted anglophile, Maurois later produced Histoire d’Angleterre (1937.)
Maurois’s large literary output includes such eminent biographies as Ariel (1923, on Percy Bysshe Shelley,) Disraeli (1927,) Voltaire (1935,) A la recherche de Marcel Proust (1949; In Search of Marcel Proust,) and La vie de Sir Alexander Fleming (1959; The Life of Sir Alexander Fleming, 1959.) He also wrote several novels, fantasies, tales for children, and critical and philosophical essays.
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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
Topics: Biography
Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires
seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage.
—Andre Maurois
In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people.
—Andre Maurois
Topics: Books, Writing, Literature
No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.
—Andre Maurois
Topics: Originality
Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
—Andre Maurois
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.
—Andre Maurois
Topics: Confidence
A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.
—Andre Maurois
Topics: Marriage, Crises