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.
Andre MauroisRead
Lost Illusion is the undisclosed title of every novel.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that every story involves a disillusionment or loss of innocence.
Andre Maurois emphasizes the universal theme in literature where characters often experience a loss of illusion, leading to personal growth or transformation. This concept reflects the depth and complexity of human experiences, showing that through the journey of life and storytelling, individuals come to terms with reality, moving from naive expectations to a clearer understanding of their circumstances.
In practice
Use this quote during a book club discussion to highlight character development.
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.
It is better to teach a few things perfectly than many things indifferently...
We can talk frankly about our defects only to those who recognise our qualities.
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.
A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.
Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare.
You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.
If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and parchment codex in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it.
A big part of me would be very proud never having anything of mine adapted, because if you want the real experience, there's only one way to get it. You're going to actually have to be a reader.
Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye β¦ I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.
To say that such-and-such a circumstance is 'Kafkaesque' is to admit to the denigration of an imagination that has burned a hole in what we take to be modernism - even in what we take to be the ordinary fabric and intent of language. Nothing is like 'The Hunger Artist.' Nothing is like 'The Metamorphosis.'
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