Literary Birthday – 3 November – André Malraux

André Malraux was born 3 November 1901, and died 23 November 1976.

Quotes

1. Man is not what he thinks he is; he is what he hides.
2. Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.
3. I don’t argue with my enemies; I explain to their children.
4. No one can endure his own solitude.
5. The human mind invents its Puss-in-Boots and its coaches that change into pumpkins at midnight because neither the believer nor the atheist is completely satisfied with appearances.
6. An art book is a museum without walls.
7. The mind supplies the idea of a nation, but what gives this idea its sentimental force is a community of dreams.
8. War puts its questions stupidly, peace mysteriously.
9. In literature, as in love, one is often astonished by what is chosen by others.
10. The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.
11. A political leader is necessarily an imposter since he believes in solving life’s problems without asking its question.
12. If you can’t make art, make your life a work of art.

André Malraux was a French novelist, art theorist,https://www.writerswrite.co.za/the-7-critical-elements-of-a-great-book/ and politician. Malraux’s novel La Condition Humaine won the Prix Goncourt. He was appointed by President Charles de Gaulle as Minister of Information (1945–1946) and subsequently as France’s first Minister of Cultural Affairs during de Gaulle’s presidency (1959–1969).

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andr%C3%A9_Malraux,_Pic,_22.jpg

Roger Pic, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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