Francois Mauriac

Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed-off wings where he never ventures.

Read quote

Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.

Read quote

The grandeur of man lies in song, not in thought.

Read quote

What I fear is not being forgotten after my death, but, rather, not being enough forgotten. As we were saying, it is not our books that survive, but our poor lives that linger in the histories.

Read quote

A cemetery saddens us because it is the only place of the world in which we do not meet our dead again.

Read quote

Let us be wary of ready-made ideas about cowardice and courage: the same burden weighs infinitely more heavily on some shoulders than on others.

Read quote

A good critic is the sorcerer who makes some hidden spring gush forth unexpectedly under our feet.

Read quote

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.

Read quote

By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.

Read quote

The arrogance of poets is only a defense; doubt gnaws the greatest among them; they need our testimony to escape despair.

Read quote

The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling.

Read quote

Sin is the writer's element.

Read quote

A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness.

Read quote

Quotes by Francois Mauriac