About Jean Giraudoux

Hippolyte Jean Giraudouxwas a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II.
His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy.

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More quotes from Jean Giraudoux

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

Men should only believe half of what women say. But which half?

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

I’m not afraid of death. It’s the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

There are no elements so diverse that they cannot be joined in the heart of a man.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

There is an invisible garment woven around us from our earliest years; it is made of the way we eat, the way we walk, the way we greet people.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

A man has only one way of being immortal on earth: he has to forget he is a mortal.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

I have been a woman for fifty years, and I’ve never yet been able to discover precisely what it is I am.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

One of the privileges of the great is to witness catastrophes from a terrace.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

I tell you, sir, the only safeguard of order and discipline in the modern world is a standardized worker with interchangeable parts. That would solve the entire problem of management.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

The secret of success is sincerity.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

When you see a woman who can go nowhere without a staff of admirers, it is not so much because they think she is beautiful, it is because she has told them they are handsome.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe; a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

Only the mediocre are always at their best.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

It’s odd how people waiting for you stand out far less clearly than people you are waiting for.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

Faithful women are all alike, they think only of their fidelity, never of their husbands.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

Everyone, when there’s war in the air, learns to live in a new element: falsehood.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

We all know here that the law is the most powerful of schools for the imagination. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)

Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices call to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom.

Jean Giraudoux

French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (1882-1944)